


Would That I

by despommes



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Casual Sex, Cunnilingus, Depression, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hair-pulling, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Oral Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:40:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/despommes/pseuds/despommes
Summary: "Like I said," Adrian mutters and leans back against the deck railing, the light from inside the building glinting off of his rings, "he's not my type. But he may yet turn out to be yours."Lenore laughs at that, pretty and tittering behind the knuckles of her hand. "Mytype, is he? And just what might that be?"He inhales, smoke filling his lungs as he breathes in. He blows a plume of it in her direction just because he knows it will annoy her. The short-lived vindication he feels at the way she wrinkles her nose is pathetic, but he revels in it all the same. Adrian smiles at her with all the petty indignation he is capable of, aloof and devastatingly beautiful as he answers."Un-fucking-fortunate."
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Hector, Alucard/Hector (Castlevania), Hector/Lenore (Castlevania)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 108





	1. Yes

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to take a shot at the whole modern AU thing! Please leave a comment and let me know how you guys liked this first chapter :)
> 
> If any of you are interested, I've made a playlist to go with this fic. You can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTvWXsZ8KjyYtjoUKPYJI3XMT9VI_7DXW).

6:00 PM

His alarm goes off. The gentle, cascading melody he’d originally thought would be soothing to wake up to rings tinny through the room. Adrian reaches blearily for his phone on the bedside table, his arm still as half-asleep as he himself is. He nearly drops the fucking thing on his face trying to turn it off. His irritated groan fills the silence left behind.

There is a subtle hangover throbbing in the space behind his eyes, the consequences of three glasses of wine on an empty stomach and no water to chase it. It is then he remembers that he had forgotten to eat before he went to sleep. His stomach twists beneath his heart, sick and starving both at once, and Adrian swallows thickly as he rolls over in his bed. His lips are chapped, chalky and dry. His tongue tastes fetid in his mouth.

The evening sun washes the apartment in a melancholy haze of bloody orange and stale grey, filtering through the great, wide windows unabated. He’d neglected to close the drapes before he slept. There was no point now, with nightfall so close at hand. The light gleams over the herringbone floors in intermittent patches. Soon it will be replaced by the glare of the city at night as it raced down below.

He scrolls through the notifications that had accumulated on his phone as he’d slept. Twenty-eight emails, sixteen work-related and twelve spam. He has two messages on Scruff, both the same bland _‘hey’_ he gets on a nearly daily basis, and another one on Grindr asking if he can host. There was a text from Sypha wondering if he has plans that weekend. Adrian thinks of the edibles sitting in the repurposed sewing box he keeps downstairs and tells her he’s not sure. He answers a few of the emails, thumbs absentmindedly through the Grindr message’s photos before replying he’d be free after three.

He lays his phone screen side down over his chest and throws an arm over his face, trying to convince himself to get out of bed.

The ache in his head worsens as he sits up. He grabs at the night stand, crumpling the torn foil packet in his palm to toss it into the bathroom trash. Harsh, white light casts his face in a feeble brilliance. The bulbs hum in their fixtures. There are dark circles sunken in below his eyes. His hair is flat on one side from his pillow and probably could use a wash. His skin is as pale and sick as he feels, his lips flaky from dehydration and nearly colorless. He prods gingerly at the purpling bite mark left in the skin over his shoulder, making a face at the sting it leaves behind it.

He looks, in so many words, like shit.

Adrian brushes his teeth, glad to rinse the foul taste from his mouth, stepping over the clothes littered across the fashionable white tile to turn the shower on. He holds a hand under the water to test the temperature and when he’s satisfied with it, he spits into the sink and steps under the stream. He does wash his hair that day, and when he gets out he wraps it in a towel to dry. The laundry basket full of clean but unfolded clothes sits admonishingly in front of his closet door, and as he pulls something to wear from it he makes a note to put it all away at some point, knowing that he will undoubtedly either forget or simply not bother.

A yawn stretches at his jaws as he makes his way down the loft stairs, the wood creaking under his feet as he goes. Two stemless wine glasses sit upon the ottoman in front of his sofa from the night before. Their polished glass is dotted with fingerprints, the interior stained red with dried wine. The nearly empty bottle is still open on the carpet, its cork left behind on the kitchen counter with two or three others from similar nights. There is still half a bowl in the water pipe where he’d left it on his dining table. Adrian considers it for a few moments. The looming project deadlines on his calendar help him to decide against it.

Breakfast, if a meal could be called that at 6:42 in the evening, is a dwindling container of supermarket hummus with pre-sliced carrots and slightly limp celery. Adrian gnaws idly at it as he sits down to work in the office space he has somehow managed to keep some degree less cluttered than the rest of the place. There are a few magazines strewn out over the glass surface of his desk, some loose cardstock and opened mail, but still enough room for his tablet. 

Adrian flits through the two monitors in front of him. He pulls up reference images and emails from clients, settling in for a solid eight hours of relatively uninterrupted focus. The work itself is fulfilling, something he is grateful for every time he sits down to it. The projects may not always be groundbreaking, but he usually ends up with something he is proud of and, occasionally, something to add to his portfolio.

Eight hours turns out to be about six and a half. He finishes the two projects closest in deadline, an abstract piece for a publication and a similar work for a startup’s website. Towards one in the morning, he ends up cross legged in his desk chair watching for any incoming emails, scrolling idly through his phone as Trevor badgers him about the upcoming weekend. 

_‘Been like two weeks since we last saw you,’_ Trevor types. _‘Wanna make sure you’re still alive.’_

Adrian rolls his eyes. _‘How touching.’_

_‘We can order takeout. From whatever bougie fusion place you want.’_

His thumb hovers over the keyboard as he thinks of a reply. A tiny surge of guilt makes him bite at his lower lip. It does not sit well with him that his friends feel it necessary to try and bribe him to see them.

_‘You pick the place but I’m choosing what we watch.’_

_‘Yeah you’ll have to duke that out with Sypha.’_

That makes him smile. He can only imagine whatever old, obscure films she’d been able to uncover in the library. She loved those kinds of movies, and she usually had good taste.

Towards 2:30 he looks for something to eat: leftover quinoa salad, eaten directly from the plastic container and still cold from the fridge. There is a message on his phone from the same Grindr profile. He sends him his address as he chews thoughtfully on a green bean, once again browsing through his photos. It occurs to him, as he is walking up the stairs to shower again, that he had forgotten about the half-bowl still sitting in his water pipe. After this one leaves, he tells himself.

By the time he’s clean, moisturized, and brushed and flossed his teeth, his unit’s com system goes off. He confirms through the surveillance feed that it is indeed who he’s expecting and buzzes him in. He has long enough to wash the same two wine glasses from the previous night before there is a knock at his door. Adrian sighs through his nose, raking his fingers through his hair to try and make himself look better than he feels.

This one is as suitably handsome as all the rest of them: chiseled jaw, olive skin, with neatly cut black hair. He stands just a few inches shorter than him, though broader in the shoulders. He offers Adrian a close-lipped and awkward smile.

“Adrian?” he asks, and he nods in answer, opening the door wider for him.

“Sorry,” he mutters, locking it after him. He pulls a new bottle of red wine from a cabinet in the kitchen, already pouring himself some of it. “I don’t think I got your name.”

“Brandon.”

“Would you like a drink, Brandon?”

Brandon shrugs. “Sure.”

His guest’s eyes wander about the space as Adrian pulls out the other glass. People usually always say the same things once he lets them in: ‘nice place,’ or ‘what do you do?’ Maybe the occasional ‘are you from the city?’ The cork joins the others on his kitchen counter and Adrian wonders which one it will be this time.

“This is a really nice place,” Brandon tells him as he hands him the wine. His gaze roams the apartment, over the living room, Adrian’s designated office space, then towards the stairs that lead up to the loft where his bedroom is. Brandon turns to face the windows, letting loose an appreciative exhalation. “Shit, that _view.”_

The sight of the city below them is, admittedly, breathtaking. There are times Adrian takes it for granted. Even at this hour, well past three in the morning, the lights are dazzling as they glitter against the pitch black night.

Adrian sips at his wine. The first mouthful is mellow over his palate; dark and rich, but balanced by the brightness of the tannins. It is very good. “I believe the building was once an industrial space.” The cushions of the low-backed, L-shaped sofa give under his weight as he reclines, pulling up a leg to fold it underneath himself. The gaping collar of his sweater slips over the rounded bone of a shoulder. He doesn’t miss the way Brandon’s eyes dip to the exposed skin. “It was renovated a few years ago. Converted into apartments.”

He has never been good at this part: the small talk. The mundane, polite bullshit that gets them from one place to the next. There is an art to it he has yet to master, despite all of the men that have walked through his door. All of the strangers that stood where Brandon stands now, every bit as handsome and bland and easy to read, complimenting his apartment or the artwork on the walls while they drink the wine he serves them and try to play this off like it’s anything other than what it is. Many of them are simply making an effort to be cordial, as he suspects is the case now, and he can appreciate the gesture. But there are times he wishes they just wouldn’t fucking _bother._

Brandon points at a canvas hanging from the exposed brick of the wall beside him. It is an older piece, one he’d done in art school for a painting final. Green botanicals depicted in dreamy watercolors. Painting is not quite his forte, but he was satisfied enough with it to keep it up for people to see. “Did you paint this?” he asks, leaning in closer to read the signature.

Adrian taps a black-varnished fingernail against the rounded wall of his glass. “Yes.”

“You’re an artist?”

“Digital illustrator. I also do web design.”

“That’s… really cool, actually.”

He does not ask Brandon what it is he does for a living because, frankly, he is not all that interested. There might be some guilt to be felt at that but he can’t bring himself to care. A notification flashes at the top of his phone: Trevor asking if Friday night was okay with him. Must be having trouble sleeping. He types out a quick _‘yes’_ with his thumb before setting it on the end table beside him. Adrian again runs his fingers through his hair, pulling it over one shoulder. It leaves the long, pale side of his throat exposed to the air. He fixes Brandon with a heavy-lidded look.

“Come sit down,” he implores him, and punctuates the request with a lazy stretch that leaves a sliver of his abdomen bare, his sweater riding up as he moves.

Brandon chuckles. He slowly ambles his way across the room. “You serve me red wine and ask me to sit on your _white_ couch?” he asks playfully. It makes him smile a little.

“Are you going to spill my wine, Brandon?”

He brings the glass to his lips, stare never leaving Adrian’s as he slowly drains it. Adrian’s gaze falls to his throat as he drinks, admiring the bob of his adam’s apple, the fluctuation of it as he swallows.

_That answers that._

The empty wine glass is discarded on the end table, and when Brandon pulls his shirt over his head Adrian drinks in the sight of him just as greedily. The pictures had been good, but then again they never are as gratifying as the real thing. The body before him is a landscape of toned muscle, solid and visceral as he crowds in close over where Adrian sits on his sofa. The wide chest is dusted with fine, dark hair, jeans riding low on strong hips. His mouth is suddenly dry, and this time it has nothing to do with tannins.

“You should finish that.” Brandon tilts his head to the glass in his hand. Adrian does. He sets it down and sits up, back straight as his hands come to rest at the front of his thighs. He spreads his legs to make room for the man between them. A broad hand curls around the nape of his neck and the witty retort he had readied is lost as his breath leaves him in a hitched gasp.

 _Yes,_ he thinks, as his head is guided so that he looks up and into Brandon’s face. This part he was familiar with. This is all comfortable to him. _This_ he could navigate.

His head is tilted to the side, hair sliding over his cheek as Brandon trails a thumb over the slope of his shoulder. He presses briefly into the purpling bite mark left in the join there, just enough to twinge and Adrian makes a tiny, pained sound. Heat pools low in his belly at the burn of it against his nerves.

“Is this what you like?” Brandon asks him. “You like being bitten?”

“Yes,” he answers honestly.

“What else do you like, Adrian?” The grip at the back of his neck tightens, ever so slightly. “Show me.”

The pitch of his heart in his chest must be loud enough for his neighbors to hear. Adrian grabs him by the wrist, guiding tanned, thick fingers through the tresses of his hair to weave them in. He is rewarded with an experimental tug and the moan it tears from him is filthy.

“Want me to pull your hair?” he asks him, and Adrian nods just to feel the tension of it against his scalp. “Want me to hold you by all that pretty blond hair while I fuck you?”

_“Yes.”_

A smirk splits the handsome face. “I might. If you say please.”

Annoyance flares in him, a sour note that mingles with the heady thrum of arousal. He should have known this was how this would go. The especially good looking ones usually turned out to be self-important dicks looking to feed their egos. Adrian is suddenly possessed with the urge to push Brandon away, to pick up his shirt and throw it at him, tell him to get the fuck out. But he doesn’t.

He could liken it to a wound that never heals. A gaping hole in his chest that he has not figured out how to close yet. The sex is merely a sedative; a band-aid to cover the screaming void that howls at him now as he toys with the idea of throwing him out. As much as he loathes the idea of being talked down to, the pretty, frigid rich boy some of these men feel the need to take down a notch, he’ll swallow a portion of his pride for this. For the chance to fall asleep without his own heart trying to eat itself from the inside out. It would not be the first time he’s done it and, judging by the need welling like a tide pool in his gut, it would be far from the last.

Adrian cranes his neck, hating himself for the way he shivers when it tugs at the roots of his hair. His chin meets the worn denim at the waistband of Brandon’s jeans, lips hovering just near enough that he can feel the heat of him. He stares up at him through the fan of his lashes, as coquettish and docile as he can make himself out to be, and waits. Waits until he can hear the tiniest stutter in his breathing, can see it in the tremble of core muscles. The smallest dilation of pupils as they stare down at his face. Adrian strains oh so gently against the hand at his scalp to timidly press his tongue to the skin there, wet and hot against the hair that trails down past his clothes.

“Please.”

They fold when they think they’re getting what they want. They always do.

After that, it is so easy. Easy to let Brandon toss him down on the sofa and pin him there by the hips. Easy to let him rip the sweatpants from his legs and toss them god knows where in the apartment. Easy to let him suck him so he can’t think straight, his heels digging into a strong, hard back as he works his way down his throat. Brandon reaches up to prod at his lips with his fingers, and Adrian moans as he opens his mouth for it, swirling his tongue over them and hollowing his cheeks the way he would around a cock. When he’s done Brandon fucks him on two of them until he whimpers.

“Condoms,” he gasps as he writhes, trying to string a coherent thought into words, “and lube. In the coffee table.”

He vaguely registers the nod he’s given in answer. Brandon sits up to open the drawer and as he goes Adrian reaches down to touch himself while he waits. Seconds later his hand is batted away and he is rolled over on his belly, the grip at his hips forcing him up on his knees. The sound of ripping foil reaches him through the blood roaring in his ears, as does the cap on the bottle, and he hisses in displeasure as cold lube drips over his skin. Brandon lines the slick, sheepskin-covered head of his cock with his hole. Adrian drops his head into his arm, steels himself for it as he pants, so ready for it he _aches._ Brandon catches against his rim and he sighs. He does it again, nudging in the tiniest bit forward only to pull away at the last second. A quiet laugh rings through the desperate sounds he makes.

“Look at you. You’re _gagging_ for it.”

A sudden shock of anger hurtles through him at that. Adrian grinds his teeth against it, impatiently tilting his hips back. “Would you just hurry the fuck up—”

He cuts himself off with a long, guttural moan as Brandon finally thrusts into him, hard and unforgiving and just a little too quickly to be entirely comfortable. He rocks forward, sets a ragged pace, grinds into Adrian until it almost hurts, and still it is not enough.

“Harder,” he growls. He reaches a hand behind him to grab at the back of Brandon’s leg, sinking his nails in none too kindly. Brandon responds by curling his fingers in Adrian’s hair and pulling up and to the side. The sharp sting of it sings along his nerves, the pain keeping him complacent even while he fights for breath against it. Tears blur his vision. He blinks them away, eyelids fluttering to a close as Brandon fucks him, every withdrawal of his hips met with the harsh smack of skin as he is dragged back down on his cock by the roots of his hair. The sweater he hadn’t bothered to take off is rucked up to rest under his arms. Brandon’s free hand grips around the width of his thigh and for a moment Adrian panics. If Brandon actually does feel the raised ridges of scars there, if he even _notices_ them, he says nothing of it.

He has no idea how long he lingers there, in the liminal space between agony and pleasure, but it’s good, good enough to keep at bay the vacuum that threatens to swallow him whole every waking moment. Brandon hits home, or close enough, with every other thrust. It mounts quickly at his core, a cup threatening to overflow and spill out over the sides. Adrian snakes a hand underneath himself and rolls his palm over the weeping head of his cock. The arch builds in his spine, his thighs shaking as every muscle in his body draws taut against the pressure building behind his gut.

Brandon yanks his head back and buries his teeth into the already bruised half-moon of skin there.

Adrian shouts as he comes. It is not the numbing relief he had been expecting but something rushed and wicked that flays him raw. He spills into his hand as his toes curl into the cushions, bearing down on the man inside him until he simply can’t any longer. Brandon lets go of his hair and Adrian slumps forward on his elbows as he gasps for air. The tousled length of his hair falls into his eyes. He rests his cheek against the sofa underneath him, eyes sliding shut as he catches his breath.

Brandon does not give him the chance. He continues to rail into him, every stroke chased by a bitten off groan. Adrian winces with each one as it glances over his prostate, overstimulated and quickly growing tired. His knees are starting to burn where they’re being scraped against the couch.

“Ugh, _stop,”_ he whines, swatting at Brandon’s thigh. He thinks he hears a frustrated scoff before he pulls out unceremoniously. A hand closes around his shoulder then and Adrian swallows a strangled sound as he is flipped over on to his back. Brandon pulls the condom off, crawling forward to lean over him, hand working vigorously over his cock. Adrian bites the inside of his cheek and watches him spill over his stomach. He tries very hard to keep a neutral expression as it pools over his abdominals, hot and sticky where it falls.

He fucking _hates_ it when they do that.

“That’s a good look for you.”

It takes every mite of willpower left to him not to roll his eyes.

Brandon has the decency to get some paper towels for him from the kitchen, tossing the condom and its wrapper along the way. Adrian grimaces as he wipes himself clean of the mess. He laments the very real possibility he will have to take another shower. His pants lie on the corner of the rug and he tugs them up over his hips, not bothering to re-tie the strings in the waist. He checks his phone to find no new messages from Trevor; he must have fallen asleep, then.

“It’s getting late,” he mentions to Brandon over his shoulder. It is late, in fact. So late it could be considered early. The unsaid _‘you should get going,’_ is loud in the silence that has fallen over the loft. Brandon, thankfully, seems to get the hint. He pulls his shirt over his head, toes his shoes back on as he buttons his jeans. Adrian turns to lead him back towards the door.

He doesn’t anticipate the lips at his neck, firmly pressed to the deepening bite mark where it is newly tender. Adrian tenses as Brandon pulls away.

“This was fun.” He smiles at Adrian, pulls out his phone to check it. “Let me know if you ever want to hang out again.”

“I will.” He hates himself for the knowledge that he might just take him up on the offer. He was a prick, but he was pleasant enough to look at. And despite the theatrics, the sex had been decent. “Good night.”

“Night.”

He locks the door behind him.

Adrian pours another glass of wine. The cityscape outside his windows continues to glow, even at this hour, and he allows himself a moment to simply watch. Cars pass in the streets below, their headlights moving slowly and steady over the pavement. Lights in the buildings surrounding his own glare back at him as he drinks. The sight is both hauntingly beautiful and gently lonely.

He finishes the half-bowl left in his water pipe. The smoke drifts lazily past his lips as he exhales, leaving the air in his kitchen hazy with it. It takes the edge off. As the time grows nearer to five than it is four in the morning, he makes himself breakfast. Two eggs fried over easy, topped with chili oil and flaky salt, with thickly sliced toast. He cuts a grapefruit into halves and saves one for when he wakes up the next day. His hastily prepared meal is eaten at the kitchen counter, chased down with another glass of wine.

A third shower rids him of whatever remains of Brandon on his skin, leftover traces of come, sweat, and the lube still slick between his thighs. Afterwards he sits naked in his bed, hair pulled up off his shoulders into a haphazard bun to keep it dry. Adrian thumbs idly again at the mottled blue crescent moon over his shoulder. It hurts in a vague, fuzzy sort of way; the pain has the alcohol and the weed to contend with in his blood. His touch trails down the length of his arm. The criss-crossed map of scars there reads almost like braille under the sensitive pads of his fingers. He feels for the matching ones on his thighs, digs his nails into the ink embedded in the skin over the right.

Three white lilies and their stalks.

The brilliance of the city begins to dim with the early, grey light of dawn. Adrian falls asleep in its gloom, once again forgetting to close his curtains.

* * *

Friday dawns on him in the form of his phone vibrating so hard it nearly slides off of his night stand.

He is jerked into wakefulness at the sound, bleary panic wrenching his eyes open with a gasp. Pillow-rumpled hair hangs over his face like a shroud as he reaches, uncoordinated, for the offending sound. Adrian somehow catches it before it hits the ground but there is no grace to the feat whatsoever. His eyes squint as they try to focus on the screen, arm little more than a dead weight as he tries to unlock it. It is nearly noon.

There is no number; the contact information reads ‘No Caller ID’ back at him. While he normally wouldn’t answer to an unfamiliar number, for a few reasons, he has been expecting to hear back from a client for a few days now. He pointedly tries to blink the sleep from his lashes as he swipes at the green icon.

“Hello?”

He fails, spectacularly, at attempting to sound anything other than as if he has just woken up.

“Adrian?” a woman’s voice responds. It sounds vaguely familiar but his head is still halfway in a dream and he is barely able to remember his _own_ name, much less that of a disembodied voice talking to him through the phone.

“Yes?”

“Good afternoon. This is Chō, with Ţepeş Enterprises.”

The vitriolic ‘fuck off’ at his tongue is nearly a reflex. He reigns it in though the scowl that covers his face is harder to deny. “How did you get this number?” he snaps, voice still rough with sleep.

“Please don’t hang up,” she says, and he nearly does that, nearly disconnects the call and throws his phone across the room to ensure she does not have the chance to ring him back. He doesn’t. He knows Chō is only a PA, only doing her job, but it does little to quell the ire building into a headache between his temples.

“What do you want?”

“I’m calling on your father’s behalf.” He rolls his eyes. “He has asked me to inform you there is a box of Dr. Ţepeş’ things that you are welcome to look through, if you would like.”

 _That_ stuns him. It has been years since they spoke face to face, but the last time he had seen the man he would not have thought him to be capable of sorting through his mother’s belongings. Much less parting with them. His mind scrambles to think of something to say in response but he finds himself at a loss for words.

“I can bring them to your residence later this evening if that is all right.”

“Ah, no,” he scoffs. The pieces are beginning to fall into place now. It wouldn’t be the first time his father has attempted to find out where it was he lived, but this might just be the most conspicuous and ham-fisted yet. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Will you be visiting the estate then?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Adrian pulls his hair over his shoulder, combing his fingers through it. “Leave it in the lobby. I’ll be by at some point today to collect it.”

He does not give her the chance to try and negotiate, purposely neglecting to give her an exact time. He terminates the call with a touch of his finger and tosses his phone screen side down on the bed before he has the chance to second guess himself.

A familiar but no less unwelcome sense of dread sinks into his bones. The room grows dark with it, even with the midday sunlight streaming in through his windows, as he’d forgotten to close the fucking curtains _again._ Adrian covers his face with his hands to block it out, sighing long and weary into the air.

He doesn’t want to do this. He does not want to indulge his father’s petty attempt to exert whatever control over him he still thinks he possesses. Especially at the expense of his mother’s memory. It used to make him angry. It still does, though in a more somber, exhausted sense of the word. There had been a time when he would have strode into Vlad Ţepeş’ office himself to hurl whatever barbs and insults he thought would hurt the most, only to be disappointed by the indifference on his father’s face. Now, he is simply tired. This could be any one of a multitude of things: a ploy, an olive branch, a power play. Each as likely as the other, and Adrian hasn’t the energy or emotional bandwidth to decipher just which one he should expect. Not over a box filled with his dead mother’s belongings.

His fingers dig into the ink over his right thigh. The chasm inside him yawns just that much wider for it.

Most well adjusted people would not consider noon to be early, but the disastrous anomaly that is his sleep schedule works against him in this regard. Exhaustion sits insidiously behind his eyes when he finally manages to drag himself from his bed. His hair is a fucking mess, so he loosely ties it back and pulls on something comfortable and warm to wear. He spends more time than is necessary waffling over the whole thing as he eats something, answers a few work emails, and then finally starts to look for his keys. His last thought before leaving the apartment is of how he wished he’d just ignored the fucking call.

It takes an hour to get to the upper side of the city. Adrian stops at a cafe near his apartment building and buys an iced coffee, determined to keep his father waiting as long as he can. The likelihood that Vlad Ţepeş would deign to step away from his office long enough to catch his son in the lobby is, frankly speaking, small, but Adrian doesn’t doubt for a second he’ll know the moment he steps through the door. Let him wait, he thinks petulantly.

The corporate skyscraper that houses Ţepeş Enterprises, as well as several other high profile companies far too steeped in money and status, is a sterile pillar of pristine glass. It makes his skin crawl as he passes through its doors. The soles of his shoes are loud on the immaculately white tile. He walks to the reception desk, standing pointedly in front of the clerk there as he haughtily sets his coffee on the counter. The man does not acknowledge him from behind the newspaper he currently holds in front of his face. Adrian blinks in irritation. He clears his throat.

“Can I help you?” comes the bored drawl from the other side of the paper, gravelly and wholly disinterested in him.

“Adrian Ţepeş.”

The utterance of his surname seems to do the trick. The newspaper comes down to reveal the man’s sour, unattractive face. He glares at Adrian as he leans forward in his chair, eyes roving over him as though he were sizing him up. “Company ID, please.”

“I’m a shareholder.”

“ID, _please.”_

“Really, Godbrand?”

The shallow joy Godbrand obviously derives from this is apparent in the stupid grin he wears. Adrian’s temper simmers in his blood, but he does not crack. He’ll not afford him the satisfaction. “Company policy, I’m afraid. Adrian Ţepeş hasn’t graced us with his presence in a long time. I might have forgotten what he looked like.”

A colorful string of words sits just at the tip of his tongue but he convinces himself to bite down on them as he fishes the years old badge from his pocket, having brought it along specifically for this exact scenario. He tosses it defiantly upon the desk for Godbrand to see. “I’m here to pick up something—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard already.” Adrian’s jaw clenches at having been interrupted. Godbrand turns away from him to pick up a phone, dialing an extension. “I’ll let Chō know you’re here.”

“I specifically asked it be left at the front desk for me.”

“People here have jobs to do other than cater to your every whim, boy.”

Adrian crosses his arms in annoyance, though as much as he hates to admit it, Godbrand has a point. He rests his elbows on the counter and sips nonchalantly at his coffee. It aids a little in abating the fatigue induced ache behind his eyes, but doesn’t quite cure it.

His eyes wander to the great glass walls facing the city as he waits, idly watching the cars in the street and the people passing by on the sidewalk. The sudden urge to just walk out rears its head; to throw a simple “nevermind” to Godbrand and leave through those doors as quickly as he’d come in. It would doubtlessly piss off his father, and while that has an appeal all its own, Adrian stays. He bides his time and waits.

After fifteen minutes of watching the elevators at the back of the lobby, Chō finally appears, a nondescript cardbox box in her arms. Adrian straightens as she sees him. She makes her way towards him through the security barrier, her black heels clicking on the floor as she walks.

“I apologize for the wait.” She unceremoniously places the box on the lip of the desk.

“It’s fine,” he tells her, though those measly fifteen minutes had felt more like hours. “Is this everything?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

Adrian holds his breath as he looks it over. The flaps at the top have been loosely folded, leaving a gap open, but he does not look inside yet. On one of them, his mother’s name has been carefully inked in black marker. _Lisa._ He tentatively runs a finger over his father’s handwriting. All sorts of conflicting emotions battle at the base of his throat, none of which he wants to deal with here in front of Chō and fucking Godbrand of all people.

“Thank you,” he tells her, trying not to sound so pitifully sad. He’s not quite sure he manages it.

“You’re welcome. Your father asked that I tell you: I can have a car called to take you home.”

“No.” He takes the box, balances it against his hip with one arm. He grabs for his coffee with his free hand, not bothering to wipe away the ring of moisture left behind. The way it makes Godbrand’s lip curl helps him feel a little better. “No, thank you.”

He doesn’t bid either of them goodbye. Adrian turns to leave then, and he makes it halfway to the door before something, some _one,_ nearly ploughs straight into him. He had seen the man walk into the building, had thought the man had seen _him_ quite obviously in his path, but when he is suddenly intercepted by a careless shoulder it startles him so badly he nearly drops his box.

“Oh, God.” The stranger jumps as they collide, blue eyes wide behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He reaches out to steady the box in Adrian’s arm, clearly mortified. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“Excuse me,” Adrian mutters rudely, juxtaposed to the normally polite sentiment. He pins the man with a scathing look, taking a mean sense of satisfaction in the way he withers beneath it. Whatever mirth he feels, however, is quickly replaced by regret at the admonished way he gapes at Adrian.

“I… sorry.”

He says nothing in return. Eager to be gone from this place, Adrian simply turns on his heel, away from the oddly crestfallen look in the man’s eyes, and hurries out of the door to make his train before it leaves.

He spends the whole commute back to his apartment feeling so miserably guilty about the whole thing it makes him a little sick.

Once he is back home, Adrian deposits the box on his dining table and deliberates with himself as to whether or not he is ready to open it. A quarter of a blunt later, the smoke in his head leaving him hazy and dizzy, he decides that no, he isn’t. Not yet. Perhaps not until later, perhaps not for a while. He is too ashamed, too haunted by the look in dejected blue eyes to try and catalogue his memories of his mother with whatever his father has put into that box.

Adrian sets an alarm on his phone that should wake him in time to get ready for an evening at Trevor’s, eating shitty takeout and watching Sypha’s bizarre documentaries, and then promptly falls asleep on his sofa.

* * *

“God, how does Trevor find anything in here?”

Adrian grins behind the lip of his cup. He watches on in amusement as Sypha sits sprawled over Trevor Belmont’s living room floor, trying to disentangle the snakes’ nest of cables she has just unearthed from his entertainment center. He crosses his legs as she grumbles to herself and sips at his drink. The bite from the vodka Trevor keeps in the freezer for him is soothed a bit by the fizz of the soda.

He hears the front door to the house close from the other room and moments later their host returns to them, arms weighted down with plastic bags no doubt after having given the delivery driver an exorbitant tip. Sypha sighs and turns to face him.

“Trevor, where is your HDMI cable?”

“Yeah, I don’t know which one that is,” he answers, setting his spoils down on the coffee table.

“I _know_ you have one, I used it the last time I was here.”

“Well then it must be in there somewhere. That’s where I put all my cables.”

“Yes, that’s the problem!” she barks at him, holding the knot of wires up above her head for him to see. “Stop doing this! I organized them not that long ago. At least coil them up before you put them away.”

“All right, all right. No need to be so aggressive about it.”

Adrian snickers. It earns him a weary look from Trevor, who begins the task of distributing takeout cartons. “Let’s see. We have lo mein and fried rice for the table, Szechuan chicken for Sypha, shrimp and almond stir fry for _his highness,”_ he says pointedly, setting Adrian’s order in front of him, “and that leaves beef with broccoli for Trevor. Can I interest anyone in a little plastic packet of soy sauce? Perhaps a fortune cookie?”

“I’d like one—”

“Then feel free to help yourself.” Trevor flops back into the worn armchair next to the couch with his container, popping the cap off of a bottle of beer with an opener on his key ring. He seems to enjoy the half-hearted glare Adrian throws his way as he reaches for the aforementioned packets. He pulls the paper sheathe off a pair of chopsticks, and the tiny _snap_ as he cracks them apart is followed by a triumphant cry from the front of the room.

“I found it!” she announces to them, jumping to her feet. She pulls the television out to finish connecting the blu-ray player. When she’s done, she takes her chicken from he coffee table and takes her seat next to Adrian on the couch. He says nothing when she tucks her cold toes underneath his leg.

“What is this?” he asks her as she picks up the remote to play the film.

“A documentary about a 15th century cult that worshipped demons and tried to open a portal to hell.” She peers coyly into his box of shrimp. “Can I—” The question is cut short as he wordlessly offers it to her. The delighted smile she gives him is returned when she plucks a piece for herself with her chopsticks.

“And you found this in a public library?”

“It was… hidden away, with some of the more obscure pieces of our collection.”

“Can’t wait,” Trevor drawls, poised to dodge the hand Sypha swats in his direction.

The film is, admittedly, quite long but proves to be surprisingly interesting. They spend the majority of it bickering over logistics, whether or not some aspects of it were exaggerated for dramatic effect. Sypha is fascinated by the history of it all, Adrian is impressed by the quality of the production, and Trevor is entertained by the prospect of devil-worshipping monks. By the time the credits roll, their supply of Chinese takeout is dwindling and Sypha is beginning to yawn.

“I should leave soon,” she pouts from where her head has come to rest on Adrian’s shoulder. “I need to be at work early tomorrow.”

“On a Saturday?” Trevor asks.

“We have a book signing in the morning; someone needs to set out chairs and put up displays.”

“They can’t get an intern to do it?”

“The intern has an exam, and I promised I would cover for her.” She nudges at Trevor’s shoulder with a socked foot. “If it makes you feel better, I’m done afterwards. I can grab the leftover pastries and bring them by.”

Trevor humphs at that but does not say no. He hauls himself from the chair to stand, scratching idly at his bicep. “One sec. My truck’s parked behind your car.”

He leaves them. Adrian hears the front door open and shut, the sound of an engine humming to life. Sypha turns to face him, her chin a sharp point against the bone of his shoulder. “This was fun,” she murmurs softly. “We’ve missed you.”

He has missed them too, he realizes as he looks back into her wide blue eyes.

“How have you been? How’s work?”

“Work is good. Projects come and go, I’ve been building my clientele.” Her hands come up to frame his face, carefully tucking stray strands of hair behind his ears. “I’m… doing all right.”

“You let us know if you ever need anything.” She tilts her head as she says it. Her eyes shine with something he feels entirely unworthy of. “I mean it. Anything at all.”

“I know,” he assures her. “I will.”

Sypha pecks once at his cheek before she is on her feet, a hushed “bye, Adrian,” past her lips. He returns the farewell before she rounds the corner; he hears her find Trevor in the meantime, hears her kiss him goodbye before she leaves. He is not even in the same room, and still he feels wholly out of place in that moment, as though he were an interloper in their quiet moment together where minutes earlier they had all been with each other.

The hollow at the center of his chest where he knows his heart is, tamed and mild in the presence of his friends, swells briefly.

Trevor comes back with two more bottles in hand and holds one towards Adrian in offering. He shakes his head and reaches for his cup from before. Trevor shrugs and sits next to him, taking up the space where Sypha had been.

“Anything you want to watch in particular?” he asks as he picks up the remote again.

“Not really.” Adrian runs a hand through his messy hair. “Whatever you want.”

They settle on some older movie he knows Trevor has probably seen a hundred times, familiar enough that he doesn’t quite have to pay attention to know what is going on. They talk about everything, and nothing. Adrian’s clients, Trevor’s on-site jobs, Sypha’s charity projects. Adrian’s favorite audiobook that month, new tools Trevor is looking at for the woodshop in his garage, Sypha’s eccentric new neighbors. Trevor finishes his second bottle and then the one he’d initially tried to give Adrian. Adrian primly nurses the same vodka soda he’d poured earlier that night, by now egregiously flat and watered down. It is all very lighthearted, easy and detached until Trevor turns heavy eyes to him and opens his mouth.

“Are you okay?”

And suddenly Adrian is so lost, so caught off guard by the question he has forgotten how to speak coherently enough to provide an answer. He blinks at Trevor, jaw and tongue and teeth no longer sure how to form words. “Yes,” he says unconvincingly, and Trevor rolls over to face him.

“Don’t bullshit me, Adrian. Really. Are you okay?”

“Trevor—”

“I know, I just.” He sighs. “We worry about you. _I_ worry about you.”

Trevor’s hand reaches slowly for his and god damn him for it. Adrian bites viciously at the inside of his cheek as rough, calloused fingers close around his wrist. His face is tired, bleary with the bottles he’s drained that night, and as he brushes his thumb over the indentations in Adrian’s skin, rows of scars Trevor _knows_ are there, something so painful he can’t give it a name burns through him like a forest fire. Trevor must see it. Drunk as he is in his darkened living room, the only light from the television flickering over their faces, he must see the line he’s crossed.

He pulls his hand away. Inhales sharply through his nose, pressing into his eyes with the same fingers that had pressed into Adrian’s scars.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Adrian shakes his head. “It’s fine. It’s all right.”

It’s not all right. It’s not fine. The hole in his heart shrieks at him, worse than it has been in a very, very long time, and nothing about this is okay. _Adrian_ is not okay, not anymore, and he supposes that is the answer to Trevor’s question.

There is nothing acceptable about the fact that two and a half years ago, Trevor shared a bottle of whiskey with Adrian in this house until they were both stupid drunk and giggling like teenagers. Nothing all right about the way he’d kissed Trevor just to see if he’d let him. Nothing fine with the way he’d climbed into Trevor’s lap and kissed him again, again and again until it was no longer just a kiss. Nothing right about the way he’d begged Trevor to fuck him, and then Trevor _had,_ and it had been the best sex he’d ever had in his life, good enough to make him think he wanted more, more than a sad, drunken one-night stand in his best friend’s bed. Nothing okay about the way Trevor had clearly regretted it the instant he woke up the next morning, apologizing to him like it had been all his fault, like there were anyone alive better at hurting Adrian’s feelings than Adrian himself.

Trevor hadn’t wanted him. Not the way Adrian _ached_ for, and the worst part about it was Adrian couldn’t even blame him. What was there to want? What did he even have to offer anyone else but the string of strangers he lets into his apartment? Nothing. His baggage. All of this shit he himself didn’t want, clinking around inside him like jagged little shards of glass. No, Trevor didn’t want him. Trevor has his own baggage. Trevor has Sypha now to help him pick himself back up when he trips, and Adrian could never have been that for him. Not when he’s too busy tripping over himself.

Adrian loves Trevor and Sypha both, he loves them together, loves the fact they have each other. He does. But _fuck,_ it hurts to know that he was something Trevor regretted. Trevor regretted sleeping with him because Adrian had been worse off then than he is now, fucked up about his dead mother and his shitty father. He’d been in so much pain he couldn’t function. Trevor thinks he had inadvertently taken advantage of him during all of that. It’s exactly the sort of noble, chivalrous, and kind-hearted thing he should have expected from Trevor fucking Belmont. Noble intentions or no, it still hurts to know that Trevor regrets him.

Adrian waits until Trevor falls asleep. He throws a blanket over him and packs the rest of the food into the fridge, dumps the bottles into the recycling. It’s nearly one in the morning by the time he calls himself a ride and leaves, locking the door behind himself with his spare key before he goes.

He is barely past the door to his apartment before he swipes through his phone, through the multitude of apps and past conversations, photos and names he barely remembers. He thinks of Brandon, of the red wine in his glass, the calculated and airy _‘please’_ in his own voice and he feels so fucking sick he could die.

The cardboard box on his dining table glares at him from where it sits. Adrian puts his phone back in his pocket. He crosses the room. The tremor in his hands as he pulls apart the flaps of the box is both humiliating and cathartic.

It was just a few things. Keepsakes, mostly. His father must have found them in a closet somewhere, or perhaps her vanity. Mother’s day cards he’d made her as a child, some of them barely even legible in smears of crayon or marker. A few silk scarves she used to wear. Photographs of birthday parties and holidays and vacations he had forgotten about. There is a little ceramic frog he’d made for her in a 3D studio class as a teenager. It is ugly and poorly made but she had loved it. It had been her paperweight in her office. Adrian holds it in his hands and immediately understands why his father had tucked all of these away to give to him. Why he couldn’t stand to look at them any longer, and had decided to shuck the burden of them on to him.

There is something at the bottom, underneath all of the cards and pictures and scarves. It is glossy and plastic, out of place amongst the construction paper and cardstock. Adrian pulls it out to hold it to the light, and a shaky, tearful sigh splits the air around him. It is an ID badge. Under the sleek logo of Ţepeş Enterprises is a photograph of the poor idiot that had nearly bowled him over that afternoon. The picture is mediocre in quality, and the man is not smiling, but it is clearly him. Blue eyes look expectantly at the camera from behind the silver, wire-framed glasses and Adrian can recall them well enough from his own memory, mired in equal parts remorse and shock.

 _Hector Mikos,_ it reads next to his face. _Senior Developer._ Adrian scoffs. It must have come unclipped from his shirt when they’d collided and found its way into the box of Lisa Ţepeş’ things. He tosses it on the table. One more thing he has to fucking worry about: whether or not he should bother going back to return it. Perhaps Hector may just have to pay for a new ID to be made.

Adrian climbs the loft stairs to his bed and crawls underneath his duvet. He doesn’t set an alarm as he plugs his phone in. Trembling fingers gingerly brush themselves over the scars that span the milk white flesh of his wrists and he tries not to think about Trevor Belmont’s wet lips skimming over them, every bit as damning as the night he’d put them there.

The void inside him pulsates like a whimpering, living thing and if the lights weren’t out he would have thought he’d gone blind.


	2. Yours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long to get out! It's been.... a weird couple of weeks. Thanks to everyone for the feedback on the last chapter! I love getting your comments and I read every single one :)
> 
> A huge thank you to moonstone-mama for beta reading!
> 
> If any of you are interested, I've made a playlist to go with this fic. You can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTvWXsZ8KjyYtjoUKPYJI3XMT9VI_7DXW).

11:58 AM

Hector checks his email for the fifth time in as many minutes. Nothing new has arrived to his inbox but the compulsive need to look is not so easily ignored for lack of anything else to do. Most other people in the office are either out to lunch, or about to be so. As he goes back over a memo from earlier that morning, the restless energy building up in his limbs manifests in the form of a tapping foot, thudding quietly on the carpet.

Isaac glances up at him from the desk across from his own. His foot stills.

The digital clock on his monitor flickers to read 12:00. Hector allows himself a few seconds to center the nervous itch under his skin. He takes a deep breath. The expensive, ergonomic chair rolls out from under him as he stands to reach for his keys.

“Going somewhere?”

Isaac’s voice is steady and measured as ever as he asks. Hector sees seemingly disinterested eyes dart his way. He pulls his coat on. “I’m taking a long lunch,” he offers as an explanation. “I have an appointment.” It is vague, unspecific, and he doubts it does much to assuage Isaac’s curiosity. The other man says nothing, though. He may not be totally convinced but Isaac had never been one to pry.

“There’s the meeting this afternoon.” It is not exactly a question.

“I should be back in time.” A mild sense of dread sits heavy in his stomach. He never looks forward to meetings with executives, but he’ll not leave Isaac to contend with them on his own. It would not do for Vlad Ţepeş’ top two developers to make a habit of throwing each other to the wolves.

“Very well.” Isaac returns his attention to the monitors in front of him. “Good luck then, I suppose. With your appointment.”

“Thank you.” Hector tugs the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder. He always finds it difficult to tell when Isaac is being truly sincere, but this time he chooses to believe the sentiment is real.

The elevator ride from the thirty-second floor is, predictably, long. He spends the majority of it idly tapping at different apps on his phone and avoiding eye contact with anyone else that steps in beside him. When he arrives at the lobby Godbrand flashes him a rude, condescending look which he pointedly ignores as he strides past the reception desk.

The cold, urban air is a frigid comfort to him as he steps through the doors and into the outside world. He’d never liked the cold, but it does much to help the agitated edge that followed him from the building. Hector shoves his hands deep into his pockets as he begins to walk.

There had been a time when navigating the city seemed like far too much for him to ever hope to grasp. When he’d first made the transition, freshly graduated from university, it had been overwhelming. He’d never been anywhere half so densely populated in all his life, and it was far too easy to get lost among the throngs of people and sprawling streets. Two years later and he still feels that stuttered sense of wonder each time he leaves the two-bedroom he and Isaac share, that strange limbo between not belonging and needing to prove himself. But at least he now knows which metro stops to take.

The office is not far from Ţepeş Enterprises, thankfully. He spends the walk rereading the email he’d received a week ago.

_Enter the building and speak to the front desk past the revolving door. Inform them you are expected for an interview. You will be asked to leave a form of legal ID with them until you exit the building. Acceptable forms include, but are not limited to: driver’s license, government issued identification card, or a passport. Please arrive no later than fifteen minutes early. You may be asked to wait in the lobby until a room is prepared. We apologize in advance for any delays in appointment time. Should you need parking validated—_

He has read it no less than a hundred times since it had shown up in his inbox. Every word was probably already committed to memory, yet his mind stutters over every line as though there is undoubtedly something about it he is missing. As though it should not be this easy.

Hector wasn’t exactly looking to leave Ţepeş Enterprises. Not after just two years. He’d been recruited directly after graduating from university. Vlad Ţepeş himself had personally sought him out. Hector had attended a symposium during his senior year to present his thesis project; Vlad Ţepeş had been one of the judges on the panel. He had submitted a machine learning algorithm that he’d developed more or less on his own, and Vlad had been so impressed he’d offered him a position on the spot. There had been other offers, from other software companies, but none of them had been as prestigious as Ţepeş Enterprises. Vlad Ţepeş was offering to pay patenting and copyright fees for the algorithm, all under Hector’s name. He was offering him the position of _senior developer,_ right out of the gate. Hector’s mentor had been dumbstruck. The choice had been clear. He’d have been an idiot not to accept.

He’d taken the job. Hadn’t even bothered to walk at his graduation ceremony. Hector had taken his final exams and moved immediately after, arranging for his diploma to be sent to his new address in the city. He’d been offered a deal no one like him could ever hope for, and he’d taken it and run. There had been obstacles; many other people in the hierarchy at Ţepeş Industries had initially balked at the idea of deferring to someone so young, with his egregious lack of corporate experience. It was trying, but it left him several opportunities to prove just exactly why so much trust had been placed in _him._ He’s managed to make a name for himself based on raw skill alone, not something that could be said for the slew of executives with absurdly lined pockets.

So, no, he is not strictly looking for a position elsewhere. He owes much of what he’s accomplished in the past two years to Vlad Ţepeş. He held a great respect for the man, for what he has managed to build and for the generosity and good faith he’d been extended with little but his own talent to offer in return. He likes to think he’s managed to carve himself a place beneath a giant in his field, and it’s not one he would give up so easily.

That said, there was nothing to explicitly say he couldn’t interview.

Styria is a startup. A fairly new one at that, if the research he’d done was to be believed. They were looking to break into cyber security, a field he was deeply familiar with at this point in his career, so he wasn’t entirely shocked they’d reached out to him. He was, however, taken aback by the gall it must take to try and recruit one of Vlad Ţepeş’ two most vital developers out from under him.

It was just an interview, he’d reasoned with himself. Just to see what else was out there on offer for him. Neither Vlad, nor Isaac, nor anyone else in the office needed to know. He wasn’t committed to anything beyond an appointment with their head of operations. One he could simply walk away from if he wanted. It would be rude, and far from professional, but it was the truth.

The office is much smaller than that of Ţepeş Enterprises. Twenty minutes of walking through the late autumn chill leads him to the revolving door mentioned in the email. Hector pauses for a moment outside to self-consciously smooth at his clothes, to double check that, yes, he has remembered to bring copies of his resume, brought his patent documents, and proof of his current employment. He’d done the same thing earlier that morning before he and Isaac had left for work, but he does it again to curb the weight that settles over his chest.

He debates for a few seconds as to whether or not he should unclip the Ţepeş Enterprises ID badge from his shirt pocket. He decides to leave it where it is before he steps into the building.

The inside of the building is stylishly designed, equal parts modern and tasteful. It is a far cry from the gleaming white of what he is used to, but he supposes it could be considered welcoming. The woman at the desk lifts her head as he walks in.

“Hello,” she greets him, and he blinks in the face of the friendly smile she extends to him. “May I help you?”

“I’m here for an interview.” He tentatively approaches the desk, hand nervously gripping at the strap of his bag where it crosses over his chest. “Hector Mikos.”

“Identification, please.” He searches through his bag for a moment before pulling out his passport, sliding it towards her. She takes it with a nod of thanks. “I’ll hold on to this for now. I trust you read the email?”

“I did.”

“Great. Do you happen to remember who it is you’re interviewing with?”

“Carmilla. We spoke briefly on the phone.”

“I’ll let her know you’re here. Sign this, please, and I’ll have a visitor’s pass printed for you.” He does. A couple minutes later a printer hums to life behind the desk. She reaches out to hand him a sticker with his name, passport photo, and the date on it. Hector hesitantly presses it over the breast of his shirt. It crinkles stiffly under his fingers. She smiles at him again. “Thank you. Feel free to have a seat; someone will be down to collect you shortly.”

“Thanks.”

The receptionist returns to whatever she had been doing when he walked in, and Hector sits awkwardly in one of the lounge chairs against the wall. It looks sleek and expensive, but not that comfortable, he comes to find. He resigns himself to staring out the window as he waits for whoever it was that would take him in for the interview.

He is nervous. That becomes more apparent to him the longer he sits still. He can’t exactly put a finger on just what it is that makes him uneasy. It isn’t the prospect that they could find him inadequate; he is grievously overqualified for the opening, especially for such a new company that would most likely not be able to match his salary. Styria has only been in operation for a few months and is still in need of talent. He didn’t have much experience in interviewing, aside from mock scenarios in university and the one he’d gone through for Ţepeş, but that had been little more than a formality.

Perhaps it is guilt, he muses to himself. Despite the fact he was in no way making any plans to leave the company, there was still an element of subterfuge to this whole situation he was unused to. He would hardly call it deception; he couldn’t be blamed for keeping his options open. Plenty other people in this field hopped from one place to the other in search of the next big thing.

Few had the privilege of being so trusted by perhaps the biggest name in the industry, though, from so young an age.

Hector thinks of his desk back at Ţepeş, in the office he shares with Isaac. He thinks of the tiny plant he keeps between his monitors. The picture of his dog he’d pinned to the corkboard. His eyes wander down to the messenger bag at his feet. A gift from Vlad Ţepeş himself in honor of his first year of employment, given to him on the anniversary of his first day at work. It was fine Italian leather and his name had been engraved in the solid gold plate on the clip. It was undoubtedly the finest gift he’d ever received, simply for doing his job.

It was more than any teacher, professor, or even his own parents had ever done for him.

“Hector?”

He blinks at the sound of his name, lifts his head to see whose voice had called it. Another woman smiles at him, her face friendly when he meets her eyes. Her heels make quiet sounds on the carpet as she walks towards him. Hector scrambles to stand up, picking his bag up off the floor as he goes.

“Er, hello,” he says. “Carmilla?”

She laughs softly. “No. I’m Lenore, head of human resources.” She holds her hand out to him, pearl pink nails glittering in the fluorescent lights. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I… Likewise.” He takes her hand to shake it politely. Her palm is soft against his. Small. “Sorry about that.”

“No worries. Are you ready?”

Hector nods. He adjusts his glasses where they sit on his face. “I think so.”

“Good; follow me.”

She leads him past the security barrier. The receptionist mouths a silent but encouraging “good luck,” to him as he passes her desk, and he offers her a tense nod in thanks. He follows Lenore to an elevator towards the back of the lobby. She presses a button on the wall with her painted nail.

“We’ll be going to the nineteenth floor. That’s where most of our office space is.”

“How many people do you currently have here?”

“About thirty-seven at the moment.” She gives him a sideways glance. “Always looking to expand, though.”

He chuckles. “Yes, I suppose.”

The elevator car arrives and he lets Lenore step through its doors first. They close and it takes him a moment to realize he is the one standing closest to the panel of numbered buttons. “Sorry,” she murmurs amiably, leaning in towards him to try and reach them. This close, Hector can smell her perfume. It fills the enclosed space just as quickly as it fills his head.

“Let me, please,” he reassures her. “Floor nineteen?”

“Yes.” He presses the appropriate button. Lenore tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear where it had fallen from the knot at the back of her head. “Thank you.”

Hector falls into a tepid silence, anxious at potentially saying the wrong thing as he is wont to do in situations like this. He contemplates the scent of her perfume. It is definitely something floral, surprisingly delicate. Jasmine, his mind supplies him. Jasmine flowers, with a hint of citrus.

“Nervous?”

Lenore’s question startles him from his thoughts. His lips quirk into a sardonic grin. “Is it that obvious?”

“People tend to be nervous before they meet Carmilla. She can be a little… intense.” He notices she does not really answer his question. “Try and relax. I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about.”

“No?”

Her wide eyes give him a quick once-over. She tilts her head playfully at him. “You look competent enough to me.”

“I do?”

“You do. I’m usually right about these kinds of things. It’s why I’m so good at my job.” She holds her knuckles to her lips as if trying to hide the mirth in her face. “I was also the one who did your background check, so I may have a little more to go on.”

He looks away from her, trying to will down the blush warming his face. “Fair enough.”

They finally stop at the nineteenth floor, the elevator announcing their arrival with an innocuous chime. Lenore gestures for him to follow as she leads him down a hallway. The atmosphere of Styria is so very different from that of Ţepeş Enterprises. The lobby of the building may be all pristine white and spotless glass, but the office space itself was decorated in heavy black, dark wood and shimmering brass. Old fashioned, he’d heard a few people say. He found it to be tasteful, but he could see where that line of thinking originated. Styria was, in every sense of the word, new. The furnishings were modern: polished metal and spindly glass, accented by lots of greenery. The people sitting at clusters of desks look much the same. New, modern, and like they’re still clawing for their place in the corporate world.

Hector can’t say for certain whether he likes it.

They come to a stop outside a conference room, where Hector assumes Carmilla is waiting. Lenore holds the door open for him. “Good luck,” she says in a whisper.

“Thank you.”

He steps inside and the door closes behind him.

There had been a short phone interview before he was invited to the office proper. Typical questions he assumed they would be rehashing here and now. He had not been certain what to expect from the short conversation he’d shared with Carmilla, but the woman at the head of the conference table was nothing short of glacial. Her dress was black, her nails were red, and her hair was flawlessly styled platinum. Hector might even have said she was beautiful if it weren’t for the haughty expression she wears. She lifts her eyes in his direction as he enters the room. Hector almost feels wary to meet them for fear they might cut him in the process.

“Hector Mikos?”

“Yes.”

“Sit down, please.”

He settles into the chair at her left hand and opens his bag to pull out his documents. “I have extra copies of my resumé—”

“I’ve got one right here, thank you.” She taps a long, manicured nail to the paper. “I’ve already given it a look, but I’d like to take a few moments to go over it with you.”

“Sure.” He pulls out one of his copies, sliding his glasses further up his face as he skims over the text he’d spent hours updating just the week before. “In university, I studied computer science and engineering with a minor in mathematics. My research focused on machine learning; I developed an algorithm under my mentor that won several awards at a number of symposiums.” He shuffles through his papers for a second. “It was patented just after I graduated.” Hector hands her the paperwork, waits as she scans the page.

“Impressive.” A fragile thread of pride catches in his chest. Carmilla rests her chin over her knuckles while she reads, switching back and forth between his resumé and the patent. “And you graduated…?”

“Two years ago,” he answers for her.

“Hm. And with highest distinction. You started working for Ţepeş Enterprises when?”

“Immediately after. I was offered a position directly out of school.”

“You were offered senior developer right after graduating?”

“That’s correct.”

Carmilla’s brows raise. She blinks a bit, falling quiet as she reads further down. Hector plucks absentmindedly at the sleeve over his wrist as he waits for her next question. The longer the silence continues, the more irrationally anxious he becomes. He knows his situation is unusual, that his reumé is impressive. There is simply something about Carmilla that… intimidates him. Makes him feel unworthy. It is surprisingly unsettling.

“Let’s move on to the present. What responsibilities do you oversee as a senior developer? What does the bulk of your work look like?”

It’s a customary question, he knows. She is undoubtedly familiar with what the title entails, but it is a chance to hear it in his own words. “My colleague and I are responsible for pinpointing and delivering on Vlad Ţepeş’ strategic and technological vision. We each manage our own team of developers and work closely to ensure code comes out on time and as concisely as possible. We try to bridge the gap between trustees, board members, or executives and the more… technical parts of the business.”

She chuckles. It startles him a bit. “That must be a fun job.”

“It can be trying at times,” he says wryly. That was actually his least favorite part of what he did. Trying to explain the logistics and boundaries of programming to people used to barreling through obstacles with sheer amounts of money was more trying than he had ever anticipated. She offers him a knowing glance. “We do our best to meet expectations in any case.”

“Good answer.”

Hector was not a tactful person by nature. Choosing his words carefully was a skill almost as valuable as any aptitude in technology, one that he’d had to learn. That he was still learning, and with varying degrees of success. It made him glad to work with Isaac, who was far more adept in reading people and knowing what to say. It was something Hector envied.

“I’d like to elaborate on the more technical aspects of your capabilities.”

“Of course.”

“What was your algorithm based on? The one you developed in university?”

“I began with TensorFlow. It was a good starting point, but as I became more familiar with it I eventually branched off into something a little more my own.”

“And what languages can you work with?”

 _All of them,_ he wants to tell her, but something tentative and bashful keeps him from it. “We typically see a lot of the more ubiquitous ones: Javascript, Python, C++, Ruby.” She nods as he lists them off, as though there were a checklist and he was ticking them off one by one. “Some of our legacy code is written in older languages. There have been many occasions I’ve had to undertake learning something entirely unfamiliar from scratch.”

“Is that a challenge for you?”

“Not particularly.”

He thinks, for a moment, he might have managed to impress her. Carmilla allows him a very brief hint of approval before she quickly schools her expression into something more detached. He is surprised at just how accomplished he feels for that.

The rest of the interview is, he dares to think, a success. Carmilla asks him a few more questions about his experience working at Ţepeş Enterprises. He is presented with a few hypothetical scenarios, exercises designed to allow him the chance to demonstrate his problem-solving abilities. Even nervous as he is, they give him no trouble. By the end of the process he finds himself unexpectedly confident in his performance.

“We’ll keep in touch,” she says calmly to him as he shows himself to the door, bag once again securely slung over his shoulder. He thanks her, says a polite goodbye before he leaves the room. The woman from earlier, Lenore, is waiting for him in the corridor.

“Everything went well, I hope?”

“I think so,” he tells her. A soft call of her name from the conference room interrupts them. Lenore gives him an apologetic wince.

“Give me just a few moments,” she begs of him, “and I’ll show you back to the lobby.”

Hector checks his phone after she disappears behind the door. The process had taken an hour and a half of the two allotted for his long lunch. He has roughly thirty minutes to walk back to work and still make it to his meeting in time. Unease begins to churn sourly at the base of his throat; it’s cutting it closer than he would like, but still doable. He stares out of the building’s wall of windows, silently lamenting the fact that there would be no time during his long lunch for him to actually _eat_ anything.

“Sorry about that.”

A soft touch at his elbow snaps him out of his thoughts. He turns around to find Lenore at his side, her fingers a gentle pressure over the sleeve of his coat. His eyes linger over the pearly gleam of her nail polish against the fabric.

She offers more of the polite, mundane conversation as she guides him back to the lobby of the building. Hector finds he rather likes it. Her voice is calm in the way he wishes he could emulate in the midst of his post-interview jitters. It is reassuring. Pleasant.

As he is collecting his passport from the receptionist, she again touches his arm. This time she holds a card out to him. A business card.

“Here,” she says. “I’m available by phone or by email if you have any other questions. Don’t hesitate to reach out; we’d love to hear from you again.”

Hector takes her card. His fingers brush lightly over hers. She smiles at him and it is bright on her face in the afternoon sunlight. Pretty.

“Thank you.”

It takes him almost all of that thirty minutes to walk back to Ţepeş Enterprises. By the time he reaches the building, takes the elevator, and jogs towards the conference room the meeting has already started. Isaac gives him a pointed look as he barrels in, still in his coat and still carrying his bag.

“Sorry,” he extends to Vlad Ţepeş, hurriedly taking a seat at his side. Isaac tilts his head from across the table.

“It’s all right, Hector,” his employer assures him. “We were only just beginning.”

The next hour is filled with droning voices, dull executives and officers attempting to hash out budgets and release dates for their upcoming security project, project Castle, while he and Isaac make efforts to fit them into reality. His hand slips into his pocket at some point and when his fingers meet crisp cardstock, he pauses. He skates them over the tiny indentations of gold filigree, Lenore’s work phone number and email address under his fingertips.

* * *

The very next week he receives a formal job offer.

It shows up in his professional email inbox on a rainy Tuesday morning, just as he is making his second cup of tea for the day. His stomach twists itself into knots when he sees it, the tea turning bitter in his mouth. He makes a face over the lip of his travel mug at the knowledge that by the end of the day he will have to let someone at Styria know he will not be taking the job.

He thinks of Lenore’s card still in his coat pocket. Decides he’d much rather approach her over the matter than Carmilla.

“I need to make a phone call,” he throws over his shoulder to Isaac as he stands up from his desk. Isaac acknowledges him with a small nod, his eyes never leaving the screen in front of him. Hector finds a chair in one of the lounge areas between corridors. It is, thankfully, empty for the moment. He dials Lenore’s office number and listens as it rings, tensely pressing his knuckles into his lips. She picks up with a cordial greeting he half-heartedly returns.

“I was hoping to hear from you today,” she says cheerfully on the other line. “I take it you received our email this morning?”

“I did—”

“Carmilla was very impressed with your interview. She and I both decided you would make a great fit for Styria, Hector. We’d be thrilled to welcome you on board.”

“I appreciate that,” he starts, “but I was actually calling to tell you I won’t be taking the job.”

She goes quiet. Hector’s heart begins to race behind his ribs, and he has no idea why. This shouldn’t matter. He had never planned on accepting the job in the first place. Turning it down shouldn’t mean anything to him. “Well, that is not what I wanted to hear,” she says dejectedly.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Let’s talk about this. Let me buy you coffee this afternoon.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Please, I insist. My afternoon is wide open.”

That surprises him. Surely they’d known when they reached out to him that the likelihood he would leave Ţepeş for a startup was dismal. The tentative contract he’d been sent was clearly the best they could do, but it wasn’t nearly as good as what he currently earned where he was. Lenore sounded genuinely disappointed, and for some reason that bothered him. The memory of her perfume strikes him then, as heady and intense as it had been that day in the elevator. As bright as her smile had been when handing him her card.

“… I have my lunch break at noon.”

“Great!” There is palpable delight in her voice at his answer. He tries to ignore the rush of blood to his face it inspires. “I think there’s a coffee shop about five minutes from your office. We can meet there.”

He knows the place. He’s been there a few times with Isaac before, when their project deadlines grew too close for comfort and they stayed at work so late the little café a few floors down closed. Isaac very pointedly does _not_ drink the coffee they have in the break rooms. The coffee must have been decent then, if even Isaac was willing to make the trip for it.

“All right,” he agrees, even though a tiny kernel of dread takes root between his lungs at the knowledge he is going to have to decline her offer again, only this time in person.

“Then I shall see you at noon.” He can practically hear the grin he can imagine she must be wearing, every bit as warm as it had been the week before. He sits for a few minutes after he hangs up the phone, not quite yet prepared to return to work. He should have just said no. It would be nothing more than a waste of both their time, meeting to discuss a job offer he most definitely would not be taking.

And yet, he had said yes.

Hector normally spends his lunch break at his desk, eating whatever he’s brought from home. Isaac typically does the same though occasionally, when the weather is especially nice and they have the time, he’ll invite Hector to join him in the outdoor plaza at the center of the building. As the late autumn chill begins to settle into the city, however, those afternoons have become less and less frequent.

“Another appointment?” Isaac asks him over his prepared meal of rice, vegetables, and cold, seasoned fish. Hector takes a second to deliberate his answer as he throws his coat on.

“I’m only going to the coffee shop down the street.”

Isaac quirks one passive brow at that. “You don’t drink coffee, Hector.”

“I like their tea,” he counters. “And if you’re finished interrogating me, I might just feel generous enough to bring a slice of coffee cake back with me. Maybe even split it.”

Isaac holds his gaze for a moment longer before turning his eyes away. He blinks boredly at the screen in front of him. “Enjoy your tea.”

He doubts Isaac is truly that invested in just where it is he is going or why, but he does feel strangely guilty at not only leaving his colleague to spend their normally shared lunch hour alone, but also for not fully divulging the purpose of his outing. Isaac probably doesn’t particularly care that much either way. If anything, he may enjoy the time to himself without Hector to distract him. That said, he cannot help but feel the weight of eyes on his back as he leaves their office.

He finds Lenore inside the little coffee shop. She gives him a small wave of her hand as she spots him, the other tucked firmly into the pocket of her white, fur-lined coat. Hector insists on paying for his own drink but she adamantly bypasses his card with her own at the register to pay for them both, his plain black tea and her soy cappuccino. She takes his protestations in stride, tossing the barista a casual wink.

“I did say I would buy,” she explains in justification. Hector says nothing more on the matter as he makes to add honey and lemon to his tea.

Next comes the part he is not looking forward to. They find a small table near a window and Lenore cuts straight to the chase. She pulls up a draft of his potential contract on her phone. Discusses the potential increase in salary he would see as the company grew. Describes the benefits and facilities they offer to employees. He listens passively knowing that no matter what is dangled in front of him, he won’t be leaving Vlad Ţepeş’s side.

“There’s nothing I can say to convince you otherwise, is there?” she finally asks, defeated.

“I’m afraid not.” Hector wraps his hands around his disposable cup. The leftover chill from the walk that lingers on his skin dissipates in its radiant heat. “Again, I appreciate the offer and the opportunity to interview, but I’m satisfied with my current place at Ţepeş.” He taps idly at the cup’s lid. “I’m sorry if this… complicates things for you or Carmilla.”

“Well, to be honest we knew it would be a longshot.” She winces, the expression pinching at her rounded, full features. “You would have been our first choice, of course, but we still have a few more applicants to screen.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone suitable,” he tries to reassure her. “I’ve heard you’re very good at your job.”

She laughs at that, somehow managing to be dainty and self-deprecating at the same time. “I suppose I brought that on myself, didn’t I?”

“Apparently you managed to find the perfect candidate.”

“Yes, too bad he’s turning out to be more stubborn than I anticipated.”

Hector blushes. It’s small, but at this point the heat in his face has little to do with the tea he is still sipping. “Let me pay you back for the drink.”

“No.” She holds her hands up in refusal, shaking her head. A lock of her hair slides over her shoulder as she does it. “No no. I’ll not be taking any of your money.”

“I feel bad knowing you walked all the way to this side of the district just to hear me tell you no again.”

“Don’t! This was entirely my idea. If anything, I can just write it off as a work expense.” Lenore smiles mirthfully at him and crosses her arms over the table. She sips at her coffee, wiping away the tiny trace of foam left at her lips. “Besides, the walk was nice. It feels good to get out of the office every once in a while.”

He watches her tuck the stray piece of hair back behind her ear. As she does it, he realizes something. When they’d initially met she’d worn it pinned at the back of her head and he had thought it to be a shade of strawberry blonde. She wears it down today, in loose waves, and as the afternoon sunlight catches in it he now sees that it is actually a burnished, coppery auburn. It suits her, he thinks, just as it does the spiced color of her eyes. He startles himself with the thought of whether or not it is as soft as it looks.

Hector tears his gaze away. He drinks his tea.

“Well.” Lenore leans back in her chair. She reaches into a pocket and pulls out a pen. Scribbles something on a napkin. “Since this is technically no longer a business outing…”

She hands it to him and he sees the napkin is covered in a series of numbers, followed by her name. “What’s this?” he asks her. Lenore chuckles quietly into her palm.

“It’s my cell phone number. Like my personal phone.”

His eyes widen as he realizes. Oh. _Oh._

“If this is an attempt to persuade me into reconsidering,” he quips, only half-joking, “I’ll have to regretfully decline again.”

“It’s not! That would be a conflict of interest, and would make me _not_ so good at my job.” She tilts her head towards him, peering at him through her lashes. “I like talking to you, Hector,” she says. “I’d like to keep talking to you.”

Hector is utterly at a loss for words. Before he has time to pull himself together well enough to think of a response, Lenore stands up. She picks up her drink and grants him one last pretty smile.

“Give me a call sometime. We should do this again.”

And then she is gone. Out the door into the blustering autumn winds and city streets. He is so dumbstruck, so astonished by what has just happened that it almost does not register to him there are only fifteen minutes left to his lunch break, and he had meant to bring back something for Isaac.

“Large black coffee, as hot as you can make it,” he mutters to the barista, “and a slice of streusel cake.” He drops his wallet on the counter no fewer than three times trying to pull his card out.

The rest of his afternoon is a blur. He knows he must have made it back to the office, must have deposited his offering on Isaac’s desk, must have accomplished something in the way of productivity before he leaves for the day. There are emails in his outbox about project Castle he hardly remembers writing, coherent as they seem to be. So lost in thought is he that he very nearly misses his train home.

Women are, to put it simply, not typically interested in Hector. He’s been told he’s handsome before, and while he can see it objectively he hardly puts any worth in the idea. He is too withdrawn, too satisfied to keep to himself for most people to find any reason to pursue him, either platonically or romantically. Friends had never been a strong suit for him, and honestly he thinks he prefers it that way.

He’d been sent to a pediatric psychologist once when he was young. There had been terms thrown around that hadn’t meant much to him at the time: High-functioning. Hypersensitive. Asperger’s. Difficulty making meaningful connections had always stuck out to him, though he’s grown to understand now that it probably had to do more with nurture rather than nature. He’d been a quiet child. His classmates always found him strange, and whenever he tried to interact with them it always felt as though there was something about it he was missing. Like there were rules and guidelines everyone seemed to understand but him. Most of them avoided him; some even bullied him.

Coming to school every day covered in bruises probably did him no favors there either.

As an adult, he copes in his own ways. He has his routines, his dog, his roommate. His job. People could be unpredictable, but the work was a constant. Logic and numbers were far easier to comprehend; code could behave unexpectedly, but there was always a reason, a bug or a mistake to correct. People were hardly so easy to decipher.

Nevertheless, a very pretty girl had given him her phone number. She had said she liked talking to him, that she wanted to see him again.

Isaac typically spends an hour or two at the gym after work so Hector makes the commute home by himself. He hears Cezar’s happy barks as soon as his key slides into the lock. The little dog paws frantically at his legs as he closes the door, takes off his bag to hang it on the rack nearby.

“Hello, boy,” he murmurs as he bends down. Cezar wriggles in his grasp as he scratches behind his ears, wet pink tongue licking at his hands. “I missed you today,” he tells him, the same as he does everyday merely because it’s true.

It is easy to put the thought of Lenore to the side for a moment as he goes about his usual routine. He takes Cezar out for a short walk, made shorter than usual by the cold wind that whips through them both, and feeds him once they’re back inside. There are dishes in the sink so he empties their tiny dishwasher to fill it again. For dinner he reheats what is left of the pasta he’d made the night before; nothing impressive, but he eats it all the same.

Later that evening he ends up settled in on the sofa with Cezar tucked in at his side, happily gnawing away at an ugly toy he never seems to put down. Hector scrolls idly through his phone, not totally paying attention to the television as it flickers in front of him.

The napkin with Lenore’s number is practically burning a hole in his shirt pocket.

Her handwriting is neat, elegantly round and concise in a way he himself could never be able to manage. Cute. Hector takes his glasses off and holds it closer to his face to read it. The paper carries with it just the barest hint of her perfume. He types it into an empty contact, saves it under her name.

Isaac walks in the door just as his finger hovers over the dial button.

Hector hastily switches to another app. He is not entirely sure why, but the thought of sharing something so personal, no matter how mundane, makes him squirm. He doubts Isaac would even care that much. People date; it shouldn’t be weird. He knows Isaac sees people from time to time, though never anything long-term, but for some reason he can’t quite bring himself to let it go.

“Everything all right?”

His face must be giving away his anxiety. Subterfuge had never come completely naturally to him. “Fine,” he tries to reassure Isaac. Cezar jumps down from the couch to trot towards Isaac. He offers him the ugly, slobbery toy. Isaac takes it without a second thought and tosses it across the room, watching as the little pug chases after it. Hector runs a hand through his hair. “Why?”

“You seem a little… uneasy.”

“I suppose I am a little tired. I’ve already done the dishes by the way, but I left your coffee maker alone.” The glass pour-over contraption Isaac insisted made better coffee than Hector’s old Keurig still sits on the counter next to the scale, kettle, and burr grinder. He’s never been expressly forbidden from touching it, but knowing Isaac it was undoubtedly expensive and Hector is reluctant to risk handling it for fear it might shatter the second he laid hands on it.

“Thank you.”

They fall quiet as Isaac goes about reheating one of his prepped meals and Hector continues to stare at his phone as if he isn’t pretending to keep himself occupied. They’ve never been particularly chatty with each other. It’s something Hector normally can appreciate, but the silence only aids in coloring the unrest churning in his gut. He feels restless. Sitting still is taking far more effort than it should.

“I’m taking Cezar for a walk,” he announces, even though most other days he would wait at least a couple more hours. Isaac flashes him a quick glance of his eyes but says nothing. As soon as Hector reaches for the leash Cezar sprints toward the door, toy entirely forgotten for the prospect of another walk so soon after his last.

He toes on his shoes, pulls his coat back on, and clips the leash to Cezar’s collar before stepping out into the hallway. It is not deserted as he had expected; two pairs of eyes look towards him as he shuts his door. His next-door neighbor, a young woman carrying a shoulder bag and wrapped in no less than three sweaters and a scarf. She’s flanked by a girl he believes is her younger sister, though he’s not sure she lives there. They’ve never really spoken; the only things he knows about them are that they have accents, very thick and distinctly Irish, and that one of them has a penchant for singing.

They are also very fond of Cezar.

“Hello, handsome!” the younger one coos. She drops to her knees to offer his dog her outstretched fingers. Cezar nuzzles at them affectionately, his one good eye staring up at her.

“Evening,” the older sister says to him as she struggles with her keys. The bag starts to slip from her shoulder, and as it falls she hisses a string of curses between her teeth. Hector reaches down without another thought to pick it up for her. She smiles at him appreciatively. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The girl on the floor whispers a quiet goodbye to Cezar as Hector leads him down the hall and out to the sidewalk.

What would he even say if he were to call her? He’s never really done this before. There had been a girl he’d known in university, one he’d worked with on a project for class, but it had been short lived and he would hardly have said they dated. They’d never gone out. They slept together once and then she’d turned him down the one time he invited her to dinner. He had tried not to be bitter towards her, still to this day doesn’t harbor any dark feelings over it, but it had stung. The short history of his romantic endeavors echoed that of many of his other personal matters: bleak, and something he’d rather not think about for too long.

She’d asked him to call her. Said she wanted to see him again. An irrational part of him insists that she had made a mistake, or that this was some sort of trick. A more rational part of him insists that people meet like this all the time. The one thing he is sure of is that he is overthinking the whole situation. He has a morning shift at the animal rescue on Saturday, but after that his weekend is free. He could ask her if she’d like to get coffee again, this time so that _he_ could be the one to pay. A feeble, fluttering warmth settles low in his chest as he realizes he’d really, really like that.

Hector presses his thumb over the dial button this time.

* * *

They go out for coffee, this time on a Saturday. Hector orders his tea, Lenore orders her cappuccino, and they share an almond croissant. They sit and talk for hours, her pearl pink nails dancing over the ridge of his knuckles on the table. Lenore likes tennis, classic literature, and old movies. She’s an amateur photographer. She loves dogs, but works too much to own one. Hector listens as she laughs and finds he loves the sound. When they leave he walks her to her train stop. Their fingers brush as they fall into stride next to each other and she takes his hand, twines their fingers together in the chilly air.

After coffee, he asks her to dinner. She kisses his cheek as they leave the restaurant, just before she gets into her cab. Lenore invites him to see a movie. She holds his hand in her lap, her head resting on his shoulder. They spend an afternoon at an art museum and Hector keeps a hesitant arm around her waist in between exhibits.

At some point Lenore suggests she’d like to see where he lives, and Hector knows he has to tell Isaac. The idea of inviting over a woman he hasn’t introduced to or _told_ his roommate about seems like it might be crossing a line.

“I’m seeing someone,” he blurts out one evening. He is standing in the kitchen eating dinner and Isaac is about to leave for a night out. He lifts his eyes to meet Hector’s as he smoothes out the wrinkles in his clothes, plucking a stray piece of Cezar’s coarse, black hair from his shirt.

“I know.”

Hector blinks. “You do?”

“You spend more time grinning at your phone than you usually do. And you left her phone number on the coffee table a couple of weeks ago.” 

“Oh.” The tips of his ears are burning. He picks at the pieces of chicken and broccoli on his plate, suddenly too embarrassed to eat. “Well. I was thinking about inviting her over. Lenore.”

“When?”

“Saturday night, probably.”

“Okay.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“No, Hector.” He checks his phone. His ride must have arrived, because he begins to head for the door. “I probably won’t even be home. You should have the place to yourself.”

After he is gone, Hector sits in their kitchen, puzzled. He’s unsure why, but he hadn’t expected Isaac wouldn’t be home when Lenore came over. He doesn’t know whether to feel grateful for it or distressed.

He spends all of that Saturday cleaning. Their place isn’t exactly messy; he and Isaac both keep things fairly neat, almost unnervingly so at times, but once he starts he finds he can’t stop. At some point he considers rearranging the furniture in their living room. He is deliberating if he should move Isaac’s prayer mat to the other side of the wall or put Cezar’s bed in his room when it occurs to him that he is being, in no uncertain terms, completely ridiculous.

That evening, after he’s had the chance to shower and change his clothes, a knock sounds at the door and Isaac manages to get there before he does. He opens it just as Hector emerges from his bedroom. Lenore smiles when she sees him, every bit as friendly and cheerful as she always is.

“Hello! You must be Isaac,” she greets him. She offers her hand out towards him. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“And you’re Lenore?” He shakes her outstretched hand, but does not return the smile.

Later, after Isaac has left for his earlier made plans, Hector and Lenore sit on the sofa as they try to decide upon something to watch, tucked beneath a blanket. Cezar has taken a cozy place between them. He sighs tiredly as Lenore pets him.

“I don’t think Isaac likes me very much,” she murmurs softly.

“Isaac can be… difficult to read.” Hector shrugs. “Sometimes I get the feeling he doesn’t like me much, either.”

“Hm. Now I’m questioning his taste.”

He laughs. She takes his hand in hers, rests it over her bent knee.

Later, when the credits to the movie they’d chosen start to roll she stretches beside him. Her eyes fall on the door to the apartment’s balcony.

“Can we go outside?” she asks. “Just for a minute.”

“It’ll be cold.”

“The cold doesn’t bother me. Please.” She looks up at him, her lashes long over her eyes from where her head rests on his shoulder. “I want to see what the city looks like from here.”

“... All right.”

Outside, the city lights glare back at them through the gloomy haze. There’s not much to their little balcony. A small table with one chair, an outdoor lamp, and a potted plant that Hector occasionally remembers to water. He’s not even sure the lamp works. Lenore wraps the blanket around her shoulders, taking a deep breath of the night air.

“It’s beautiful out here.” She leans over the railing, tugging Hector beside her. As he rests his elbows against the chilly iron, Lenore traces her thumb over his chin. She kisses him, and suddenly he forgets all about the cold. Every nerve in his body is awash in slow, mellow warmth. She pulls away to grin at him, her lips slick and the city lights glittering in the reflection of her eyes. Hector timidly slips his hand behind her head, her hair slipping softly between his fingers, and kisses her again.

He thinks he could do it for the rest of the night.

He kisses her twice more, once as he walks her out of the building and once more before she gets into a car to go home. The entire way back to his apartment, a stupid smile sits wide over his face. Hector touches his mouth, skims the pads of his fingers over his lips as he tries to get sleep that night, the scent of jasmine perfume coloring his dreams.

* * *

Carmilla is her cousin, he learns. They’d started Styria with two other women, a married couple they met in university. Morana heads finance while Striga heads the two development teams they have. Lenore shows him photographs of the four of them one night, in the penthouse she shares with Carmilla. Different stages of starting the business: a few with their license and paperwork, some in the empty office space, a few of them all out to dinner to celebrate. They are clearly very dear to her if the fond look in her eyes is anything to go by.

“We’re like a family,” she tells him, tapping a finger at the base of her wine glass. “Sisters, almost.”

“That sounds nice.” Hector stares at the wine in his own glass, thick and red against the stark white of Lenore’s dining room table. The whole penthouse is probably the nicest home he’s ever been in. He feels a bit out of place amongst the gleaming furniture, granite countertops, and hardwood floors. The familiar prickle of feeling as though he doesn’t belong somewhere lingers somewhere in the back of his head, uncomfortable and just a little lonely. Lenore pulls his hand towards her. She fits her fingers in the spaces between his and it drives that sinking unease back a bit.

“What about your family?” she asks him. “Any brothers or sisters?”

He stiffens at the question. It shouldn’t come as a shock that she would want to know more about him, his family and where he grew up, but it’s not a story he is used to sharing with anyone. It is not a happy one. “No. I don’t have any siblings.”

“No? What about your parents?”

The wine suddenly sours in his mouth. He slides his glass away from himself. “I don’t know. I went into the system when I was eleven; I haven’t seen them since.”

She squeezes his fingers. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He tries for a light-hearted smile to reassure her, but he’s unsure if it works. “There was a fire. No one was hurt, but the firefighters that put it out called social services and it was determined I was… not being well cared for. I was placed into foster care. I stayed in the system until I was old enough, and then I went to university.”

Lenore lifts his hand to place a small kiss at his knuckles. They are quiet for a long time. Hector hasn’t thought about his parents in years, not deeply anyways. It’s easier to keep those kinds of memories tucked away, he finds. A strange ache lodges itself at the base of his throat. “I’ve never told anyone that,” he realizes out loud.

Lenore nods slowly, her cheek soft against the side of his hand. “Well. Thank you for telling me.”

He doesn’t quite know what he’s being thanked for, but it feels nice all the same. He huffs a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. “Sorry. That took a bit of a dark turn.”

“It’s all right. We can talk about something happier, if you want.” Lenore sits up straighter in her chair. “Like Cezar. How long have you had him?”

“Since I started working at the rescue, I suppose. He’d been there for about a year already, and I had just moved to the city. He’s friendly and energetic, but he was abused before he was brought in and needed special care. That and the missing eye made him hard to adopt out.”

She grins. “So you took him home with you.”

“I did.”

“A match made in heaven.” Lenore traces her nails lightly over the delicate flesh of his inner wrist. Hector only barely manages to hold back the relaxed sigh it draws from him, though the gooseflesh it raises over his arm is harder to hide. “I had a dog, when I was little.”

“Did you?”

“Lady. She was _such_ a good dog. Very sweet and good with kids, which was good because I’m sure we were a lot to put up with.” She takes a drink of her wine, eyes brightening over the rim of the glass. “I have some pictures of her hidden away somewhere. Would you like to see them?”

“Sure.”

While it isn’t his first time in this apartment, he has never been in Lenore’s bedroom. The space is picturesque, like something out of a photo app feed. Everything from the white rug under their feet to the curation of pillows at the head of the bed is artfully put together, pink and grey and gold everywhere he looks. Lenore lights a candle on the desk, something citrusy and clean he can’t quite recognize, motioning for him to sit on the bed. The top of her dresser is covered in framed photographs. Some of them look older, of family members he doesn’t recognize, while some are more abstract. Flowers, or birds, or landscapes. He wonders if she took them herself.

“They should be somewhere in here.” She kneels on the rug in front of her desk, rummaging through its bottom drawer. She pulls out a large photo album with a triumphant sound. “God, it’s been years since I last looked at these. The dust!”

He is handed a few pictures, some of them yellowed and stained with time. He can spot Lenore in them almost immediately, her hair still the same shade of auburn on her small head. He even thinks he recognizes a younger Carmilla with her. They’re both curled up on a large couch with a grinning golden retriever.

“That’s Lady,” she tells him, her voice wistful as she traces her finger over the picture. “She had the softest fur. We would weave little braids into it, I’m sure she _loved_ that.”

Hector smiles to himself. “She looks happy.”

The screen of Lenore’s phone lights up. She sighs, rolling her eyes. “One second; I need to check something for work.”

She leaves him with the album for a moment to lean over her desk and open the laptop sitting there. He leafs idly through the pages, eyes skimming over pictures of birthdays, piano recitals, school fairs. They’re not all of just Lenore; some of them are of Carmilla, and many of them have the two together. _Sisters,_ she’d said, and he finds it very easy to believe.

“Hector.”

He lifts his head to see her at his side, standing over him where he still sits on the bed. Her hands envelope his. She gently takes the photo album from him. Places it carefully on the floor. Lenore smiles at him, her lips parted and her eyes heavy in the candle light. Hector’s lungs suddenly struggle to cooperate with his breath. She lowers herself to sit in his lap, balanced over his knees, and suddenly it feels as if there is no air left in the room. His glasses come off; she sets them down on the bed.

“Lenore—”

“I like you, Hector,” she murmurs at his temple. He can feel the shape of her smile there. “I like you a lot.” He wraps his arms around her, feels the shape of her through her clothes, spine and ribs and scapula. She feels like a furnace this close. “Do you like me?”

“Yes,” he answers.

“Do you want me, Hector?” Her fingers trail down the front of his shirt, settling over the button of his jeans. She undoes it. Pulls his zipper down as she goes. He does want her, he thinks, even as his heart hammers in his chest. He has only ever done this once before, but Lenore _likes_ him. She makes him feel seen, heard, understood like he doesn’t think he’s ever been before. She makes him happy

_“Yes.”_

Lenore giggles. She kisses his cheek. Her hand slides down past his waistband, past his briefs and Hector bites back a shocked sound when she touches him. “Good.”

She lets him pull off her clothing, piece by piece, and then press her back on to her bed. Lets him kiss her until he’s dizzy, palm at her breasts until her nipples stiffen between his fingers, fit himself against her until there is no room left between them. He lowers his head between her legs, kisses her there until she comes against his tongue, and when he comes back up for air she shoves a condom into his hands.

“Yes,” she whispers, an echo of his own words from before, and when he slips into her body she moans into his ear. It shakes him, sends a spark down the length of his spine. Her fingers again slot themselves between his own, pull them up over her head. Hector thrusts into her to hear the sound again, does it again, and again until it becomes a rhythm. Lenore tugs his face down to hers. “Tell me you’re mine,” she says. “Say it, Hector. Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.” He gasps into her throat. “I’m yours.”

She sinks her pretty painted nails into his back when she comes again and it drags him down with her. Hector buries his face into her hair, breathes her in as he tries to keep himself sane through it all. Jasmine and wine.

He wants to stay, but he can’t; he has Cezar to think about and an early morning volunteer shift at the rescue. Lenore kisses him goodbye at the door before he leaves, her fingers gentle in his hair.

“Come back on Sunday,” she says. “We usually have everyone for brunch on Sundays, but they should be gone by the afternoon.”

“Okay,” he agrees. She kisses him one more time and then disappears behind the door. Hector catches a ride home, his heart racing in his ears the whole way there. He runs his fingers over the inside of his wrist and imagines them to be hers again.

* * *

By Sunday, the stars in his eyes have faded to something a little less blinding. The world settles back underneath his feet, a good thing considering the moment he sees Lenore again it nearly winds him. She grins brightly when she answers her door for him. There are voices ringing throughout the penthouse. He steps inside to see Carmilla and two women he doesn’t recognize, though he assumes them to be Striga and Morana, at the dining table. Striga is a tall, broad shouldered women with piercing green eyes that seem to bore straight through him, while Morana is more slender and willowy. Her skin is beautifully deep, practically glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Lenore introduces him; they all offer him quiet greetings, but ultimately seem wholly uninterested in him. For that he is grateful. He had been concerned about seeing Carmilla again.

“About the position…” he starts nervously, and she cuts him off with a wave of her hand.

“Oh don’t worry about that.” She rests her chin in her hand, leans over the table. “It’s fine. It’s business. In fact, we’ve already found a solution for the opening.”

“Brunch ran a little long, I’m afraid,” Lenore explains. She stretches up on her toes to whisper in his ear. “They’ll leave here in a bit and we’ll have the place to ourselves.” A rush of unwelcome heat envelopes him at that. “Would you like to watch something in the meantime? There’s a film I’ve been wanting to show you.”

“I don’t mind,” is his answer. Lenore smiles at him. She kisses his cheek, right in front of the other three women at the table. To Hector’s slight relief, they don’t seem to be paying that much attention to them. She leads him to the couch and mutters something about looking for the film, scrolling through her phone to try and cast it to the television. She finds it, letting out a satisfied little “aha!” before leaning back into his arm. Her head is a comfortable weight on his shoulder as he looks up to see.

Hector freezes. His heart locks up in his chest, the blood draining from his face. There on the screen, in grainy capture, is his naked body, his head between Lenore’s thighs.

“What the fuck.” His voice leaves him in a sharp, frigid whisper. “Lenore, what the fuck is—turn it off!”

She giggles, breathy and light, like this is all some sick joke to her. “What’s wrong, Hector?”

“Turn this off!” Hector tries to grab for her phone, reasoning that if she wouldn’t put a stop to it then he would. Lenore jumps out of his reach at the last second, dangling her phone like they were playing a game of keep-away. He risks another glance to the screen and his stomach physically turns at the image of himself. The pounding in his ears is almost enough to drown out all the sounds she’d made that night, amplified over the speakers, but not quite. Panic crawls up the back of his throat. “Stop it! What are you doing!”

“We had _such_ a good time the other night; I thought you’d like a playback.”

“A what?” His mind is reeling. He can’t think. He can’t breathe. Hector tears himself away from her.

“Oh, come on, Hector,” she calls to him, then her eyes flicker towards the screen, “or, well, I suppose you came inside—”

He refuses to hear the rest of that sentence. Hector makes to stand, to get up and leave before his heart flies apart at the seams, but as soon as he gets to his feet someone shoves so hard at his chest it knocks the air out of him. He lands back on the sofa with a bitten off gasp and two wide, strong hands keep him pinned in place. Lenore drapes herself against his side. She takes hold of his chin, forcing him to face forward. He tries to rip himself free but they hold him still. A frustrated cry leaves him as he is forced to watch himself.

She’d said she needed to check her email. For work. She’d left the fucking laptop open and recorded the whole thing, and he hadn’t even realized.

He was such a fucking _idiot._

“Hector.” Carmilla’s voice makes him shiver, both hushed and violent in his ear. “Listen to me: here’s how this is going to play out.”

 _“Fuck_ you,” he spits, and she sinks her long, red nails into his arm. It shuts him up.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she laughs. “You see, there are four copies of this video. Lenore has one, I have one, Morana has one, and Striga has one. Do you have any idea how much _damage_ it could cause you if they were to end up in the wrong hands?”

“What does that mean?” he asks. His mind is too frazzled to try and piece together what it is she is insinuating.

“Picture this: every single employee at Ţepeş Enterprises comes into work one morning to find a video in their inbox. _This_ video, right here, of their CEO’s favorite little developer fucking a rival company’s human resources manager. How do you think that would look for you?”

“Carmilla used to work for Ţepeş, you know,” Lenore tells him. “They had a bit of a… falling out. She left to found Styria with us. It would be a shame if wind of this got to Vlad, wouldn’t it?”

“You can’t do this. I’ll go to the police,” he threatens, and an unfamiliar laugh erupts from somewhere behind him.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Morana leans over the back of the couch. “Striga and I have some mutual friends in law enforcement. Don’t we, darling?”

The hands at his shoulder tighten so much it is painful. “We do,” says Striga at his back.

“I thought so. You go to the police and I promise you this video will find its way to every person you know, and whatever report you make won’t ever see the light of day. And I believe Lenore has also done some digging of her own?”

“Oh, I have.” She kisses Hector’s cheek. He tries to wrench himself away but he _can’t._ “Your parents’ house caught fire, didn’t it?” Lenore tilts her head. “Who set that fire, Hector? Do you remember?”

Hector goes rigid. He stops struggling against the hands that hold him. Swallows thickly against the memories welling at the back of his mind.

“A social worker quashed the whole ordeal for you, thinking you’d already been through enough. I wonder if anyone would still be interested in the truth.”

“What do you want?” he asks behind clenched teeth.

“You work for us now.” Carmilla examines her nails at his side. “Not officially, of course. You’ll continue at Ţepeş, just as you are now, but in your spare time you’ll be writing code for us. Specific code.”

“What are you talking about?”

She buries her fingers in his hair and pulls his head back by the roots. “Project Castle was _my_ brainchild. _My_ idea. I spent months of my life putting it into motion, long before Ţepeş ever even found you in whatever bullshit little symposium you were at. I won’t sit back and let him, or you, or that little prick Isaac take the credit for it. Do you understand?”

“What do you expect me to—”

“I want the code. Every single bit of it.”

“You can’t have it,” he tells her, “it’s Ţepeş property.”

Her hand tightens in his hair. He winces. “I don’t care if you have to recreate the whole thing line by line completely from fucking memory. You’re going to put it on one of our private servers and finish it before it releases at Ţepeş. Do you understand?”

He says nothing. Carmilla forces his head forward so that he again has to look at himself on the television, where he’s started to actually fuck Lenore. Her face is conveniently out of frame, a detail that had escaped him before but devastates him now. He shuts his eyes against it all. If he has to watch anymore he’s going to lose his mind.

“Okay.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I… okay.”

Carmilla pats condescendingly at his cheek. “Good boy.”

“You didn’t have any confidence in how he’d perform Lenore,” Morana comments, and Hector’s stomach sinks as he realizes she is referring to the video. “He looks a little more competent than you let on.”

“He is!” she says brightly. “It was actually quite sweet.” Hurt stings at the corners of his eyes. He swallows thickly against what feels like a fucking knife in his esophagus. She turns his face towards hers and he opens his eyes to look at her. He immediately wishes he hadn’t. “You’re mine now, Hector.” The words are layered over his own voice on the recording. _I’m yours. I’m yours._

They let him go and Hector dashes to his feet. He backs away from the four of them and towards the door, legs shaking so hard he fears they’ll buckle underneath him.

“We’ll keep in touch,” Carmilla titters to him. He bolts out of the door before she has time to say anything else. Their laughter follows him out into the hall.

* * *

Hector doesn’t go into work on Monday. He doesn’t on Tuesday either. He tells Isaac he’s sick, emails Vlad to let him know he’ll try and get some things done on his home computer and is told not to trouble himself. By Wednesday he’s back in the office without having heard from Lenore since he last saw her. Thursday is just as uneventful.

On Friday, he gets a text message.

_Coffee this afternoon, same place._

He hides his phone as though the message itself were incriminating. His eyes dart around the office he and Isaac share, like anyone was there to actually _see_ it in the first place. Isaac is busy, engrossed in the project he himself is supposed to be working on.

Hector meets Lenore at the coffee shop on his lunch break. He pays for their drinks.

“We’ll start this weekend,” she informs him matter-of-factly, smoothing out a wrinkle in her pencil skirt. “You’ll have access to a private server we keep on hand. And, if you manage to make enough progress…”

The toe of her shoe slides up his calf. Hector flinches away from her, jumping back in his chair. She laughs at him.

He doesn’t bring anything back for Isaac.

Thoughts tumble through his head like marbles down a staircase, one by one and faster than he can keep track. He wants to scream. He wants to vomit. He wants to crawl into a hole and never come out, never see Lenore’s face or hear her voice or smell her fucking jasmine perfume for as long as he lives. His phone vibrates in his pocket as he walks through the lobby doors, and Hector ignores it, wants to savor the precious few minutes he has to get back to his office before he has to look at it.

He isn’t paying attention. Suddenly the brunt of his shoulder collides with something, some _one_ he hadn’t seen until it was too late. Someone currently carrying something, a box that Hector has nearly knocked straight out of his hands. He scrambles to reach for it before it falls, relieved when they both manage to catch it.

“Oh, God,” he stammers. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

The man carrying the box is tall, tall enough that he tilts his head a bit to look at Hector. His hair is very long, and very blond, and the look on his face is enough to freeze the blood in his veins.

“Excuse me,” he hisses coldly, and it _guts_ him. He has no idea why. It was an accident. He hadn’t seen him. He should have been looking, yes, but he hadn’t meant to cause any harm.

“I… sorry.”

He sounds utterly pitiful. The man sidesteps him as though he were trash on the street and Hector watches him walk out the door.

What is _wrong_ with him?

He gets to the security barrier and reaches for the badge clipped to his shirt only to find it isn’t there. He pats at his pockets, checks his keychains, looks behind it to see if it had fallen on the floor. It is nowhere to be found.

“Lost your ID, Hector?” Godbrand calls to him from the reception desk. Shame trickles coldly over his scalp.

“I just had it,” he insists. “I had it with me when I left earlier.”

“Doesn’t look like you have it now.” Godbrand rolls his eyes. “I’ll have to get you a visitor’s pass. Hold on.”

As Hector stands at the reception desk of the company he works for, the company he’s lived his life for these past two years, lost sleep over and skipped meals for and moved across the fucking country for, he wants to tell Godbrand to go fuck himself. His hands shake against the grain of the wood and for a moment he is scared he might just lose his mind.

He doesn’t. Godbrand hands him the visitor’s pass and lets him through, and whatever stupid, petty little remark he makes doesn’t even reach Hector. The elevator walls feel like they’re slowly closing in on him but Hector simply stands there, waiting. He almost wishes they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought!


	3. Bitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left a comment on the last chapter! I appreciate every single on, and you guys always have the most in-depth, thought out feedback. I really do feel so lucky for all of it.
> 
> A huge thank you to moonstone-mama for beta reading!
> 
> If any of you are interested, I've made a playlist to go with this fic. You can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTvWXsZ8KjyYtjoUKPYJI3XMT9VI_7DXW).

Hector does not go to parties. He tells Lenore as much from where she sits in his desk chair, her legs crossed and her hands primly clasped in her lap.

“I don’t go to parties,” he insists, already doing his best to try and quell the sickly anxiety flaring at the pit of his stomach. A derisive tilt of her head follows. She smiles sweetly at him, as though he were a child protesting an early bedtime or vegetables at dinner. Cute, but ultimately nonthreatening. She looks at him that way a lot as of late.

“Well, perhaps you should start.” Lenore makes a show of examining her nails, a soft shade of dusty rose this week. “You’re going to one tonight.”

He is silent as she rummages through his closet, muttering about the inadequacies of the hoodie he is already wearing, the one he had planned on wearing all evening as he attempted to chore through another long night of duplicating code for her and her “sisters.” Though she complains about the modest collection of his clothes as she searches, she eventually pulls out an older sweater he doesn’t wear much and a denim jacket he’d bought at a secondhand store years ago. They are tossed onto his bed and he is instructed to change while she calls them a ride.

“Hmm.” She taps at her chin as she looks at him. He fights back the urge to flinch when she reaches for his face, lifting at the frames of his glasses. “Can you take these off? Leave them here?” she asks. Hector gives her a puzzled look.

“I’m near-sighted. I need them to see.”

“You don’t have any contacts?”

“No.” He wants to tell her he doesn’t like wearing contacts, that he finds them uncomfortable and putting them in makes him squeamish. He doesn’t. He doubts she would like that as an answer.

“Maybe you should think about getting some.” For a second, he thinks she is about to pull his glasses off of his face. She doesn’t. She just shrugs and looks back down to her phone. “You’d look far more handsome without them.”

Hector swallows thickly. He says nothing.

As a child, his classmates had birthday parties. Usually he was invited as a token gesture, or out of pity. He never went; he could tell when he wasn’t actually wanted, and his parents would never have let him either way. As he grew older the invitations stopped coming and he eventually learned to not let it bother him.

There had been several parties when he’d been in university, though he’d only ever gone to one. His lab partner had invited him, though it seemed more like the kind of party that didn’t really require an invitation. He’d spent all of one hour in a packed fraternity house dodging inebriated upperclassmen and staring into a sea of strangers before it all proved to be too much. Too much noise, too much alcohol, too much chaos. He was given one drink that was far too strong for him, walked in on two people having sex in the bathroom, and then promptly left, mortified and a little sick, to walk back to his dorm.

He never went to another party after that.

“It’s just a house party, Hector,” Lenore sighs. “Relax.” He is quiet, fingers drumming over his lips as he stares out the cab window. It must be annoying her. He stops.

“How many people are going to be there?”

“I don’t know?” She languidly waves her hand in exasperation, as though trying to come up with a number in her head. “Forty maybe? Just some old friends from school. No one you would know.”

That does not help him to feel better. He’s not overly fond of crowds, particularly of unfamiliar people.

He bites idly at his thumbnail.

“Ugh, _stop_ that.” Lenore swats at his fingers and he stops, embarrassed.

The cab comes to a stop outside of a large apartment building. They get out and Lenore leaves him to pay and tip the driver. The cold night wind nips at their heels as they hurry inside and up the elevator. Hector keeps his hands in his pockets to hide the way they tremble from her.

He can hear the music clear from the other end of the hall, a subtle thumping through the floorboards of the place that only gets louder the closer they come. Another penthouse, he thinks. “We’ll only stay a couple hours at most,” she informs him, checking her lipstick in a mirror she pulls from her bag. “You don’t have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to. All you need to do is stand around and…” Lenore pats his cheek. She throws him another dismissive smile over her shoulder. “Look pretty.”

 _Then why am I here?_ he wants to ask her, though he knows far better than to say the words aloud.

The inside of the apartment looks expensive, not unlike the place Lenore shares with Carmilla. Marble floors in some places, genuine hardwood in others. The ceilings are vaulted which only serves to throw the noise all over the space. People laughing, shouting, and jeering over the dull vibrations of eclectic music he doesn’t recognize. Hector can’t tell if the crowd numbers more or less than forty, but it’s a lot. Too many, he thinks, and the sinking unease settles in the spaces between his ribs, almost claustrophobic.

Lenore stuffs her coat into a nearby closet. Hector opts to keep his jacket. They are barely out of the entryway before a small group of women spot her, calling her name in warm, slurred voices. She grins at them, pretty and cheerful. She’d stopped looking at him that way weeks ago. He wonders if it is the same act she’d put on for him, or if these people might actually be on equal ground with her.

She tugs him along behind her by his sleeve, as though there were anywhere else for him to logically go besides to follow her. She chatters excitedly to her friends. He can barely hear them over the noise, though some of them verge on shrill enough to pierce through the din. Lenore leans into his arm at some point, throwing out an obscure, “This is Hector,” to them. They offer him a slew of perfunctory hello’s that he can’t quite make out, and he smiles quietly back. Lenore doesn’t offer her friends’ names in return.

He stands awkwardly at Lenore’s side, and after a while it seems like she might have forgotten about him entirely. He looks around the room for lack of anything else to do. There are people in every perceivable corner and Hector cannot remember the last time he felt so out of place. Most of them clearly come from money; he’s spent enough time at Ţepeş Enterprises to know how to spot wealth when he sees it, and this place is filled with it. Lenore had said most of them were school friends. He wonders what sort of school it must have been.

“Hector,” she says, pulling his ear down to her in order to be heard over the music. “Why don’t you fetch us a drink?”

She doesn’t really give him a chance to respond, turning back to finish whatever story she’d been in the middle of before he can answer. He stares dumbly at the back of her head. None of them seem to be paying attention to him. In fact, they’ve hardly addressed him past the clipped introduction. A flurry of questions curdle up the back of his throat, sour with anxiety he’d so desperately been trying to keep at bay. _What does she want? Where is the kitchen? Should he just help himself?_

The penthouse is, while opulently large, thankfully easy to navigate. Hector weaves his way through smatterings of people, muttering apologies as he goes. The kitchen is less crowded, though a few people linger about the counters to fill and refill their cups. He comes to the stark realization that he has no clue what to bring back to Lenore. He doesn’t really drink, and when he does it hardly calls for anything more than opening a bottle and maybe pouring it into a glass. His mind reels as he looks through the selection of liquors and mixers. There is a large bowl full of what he thinks might be some sort of punch, a mess of ice and fruit floating around a dubious concoction of spirits. Hector firmly decides to avoid it, giving it a wide berth as he looks.

Lenore likes red wine. He knows that much. As he thoughtfully considers the rows and rows of bottles that litter the countertops, a familiar green one catches his eye. It was the same brand of cabernet sauvignon he’d seen her drink on several occasions. He manages to find a clean wine glass and pours a generous amount.

For himself he fills a plastic cup with ice and ginger ale. The thought of alcohol churning amongst the tempest raging in his stomach is almost more than he can handle.

Lenore’s eyes drop to the glass in his hand when he returns to her and her friends. They light up as he hands it to her, and the relief he feels at having chosen correctly is dizzying. “Thank you, darling,” she murmurs to him, her lips again at his ear. She kisses his cheek. He takes a long sip of his drink to hide the grimace it nearly paints on his face.

They go back to ignoring him soon enough and he finds he almost prefers it to the weight of Lenore’s eyes.

He hates this. Hates feeling like a dog on a leash, with no purpose other than to remain at her side until she decides to acknowledge him as she sees fit. It’s a loneliness like he’s never quite known before, and loneliness had already been so second nature to him. It is hollowing. Hector is surrounded by people, strangers that pay him no mind as he continues to shrink next to Lenore, withdrawing further into himself until he is convinced he might actually dissipate into the hazy gloom of the mood lighting.

He can’t sit still any longer.

Hector waits until his cup runs empty. Waits for the half melted ice to rattle around in the bottom as he lifts it to his lips, then excuses himself under the pretense of getting himself a refill. If Lenore even hears him, she says nothing. He doubts she even notices he’s left.

He dumps what is left in the cup down the sink and refreshes his ice. The kitchen is empty by now, and as he pours himself another ginger ale he debates whether or not he should just stay there. It is quieter here, though not by much. He feels less like he is drowning here in the sodium yellow of the dimmed lights than he had while being ignored by Lenore and her friends.

There is a sliding door at the other side of the room, more towards the dining area. Hector looks towards the doorway, almost as though expecting to be caught doing something he shouldn’t. The rational part of his mind tells him he’s being unreasonable. He hasn’t done anything to warrant the paranoia that follows him across the floor, and yet it persists. The part of his mind that keeps track of Lenore, of her wants, her expectations, her temper, knows better than to think the rules to this game are fair.

It was frightening just how easy it was to slip back into old habits. Like a forgotten coat he’d never quite outgrown, no matter how much time had passed.

The door leads to a balcony. A huge one, at least four times the size of his own at home. There is room for an entire set of outdoor furniture. A couple of lounge chairs bracket the railings where the sun probably hits the best. There are some plants here and there that potentially make the space relaxing in the daylight, but late as it is he can’t really see them, even with the weak light that filters through the glass from the kitchen.

It is cold. He’s never been fond of the cold, but even the chill that cuts through his flimsy jacket is preferable to the suffocating haze of the party inside. Hector sits down on the step in front of the sliding glass door. Sets his drink down beside him. His breath fans out in dense puffs of fog, lingering like clouds over the city skyline that sprawls out over the horizon. Even now, with the restless disquiet that hums along his nerves at anything regarding Lenore, the sight still manages to take his breath away.

Hector takes the time to decompress as he shivers against the chill night wind that rustles through his hair, tossing it about his face in wayward curls. He tries to sweep it out of his eyes as he checks his email on his phone. A few from work have made their way to his inbox in the past couple of hours. He answers some of the more mundane ones, leaving any others for his return to the office on Monday. The familiarity of work helps to lessen the tension in his shoulders. It melts from him as the minutes pass, the noise of the party inside at his back and the eerie tranquility of the city at night stretched out in front of him.

It would have been silly to assume he would be guaranteed the entirety of the balcony to himself for the evening. Nevertheless, Hector is so caught up in the solitude and the peace he’d found in it that when the door slides open behind him he nearly drops his phone into his lap. At once his spine straightens in alert. Lenore must have come looking for him. He’s not sure how much time has passed but it must have been too long. An apology readies itself at his lips, an explanation for his disappearance, but it dies on his tongue as he turns his head.

“Excuse me. I didn’t think anyone else was out here.”

It isn’t Lenore that steps out from the doorway, but a man. A very tall man, dressed head to toe in black. The wind blows his long, blond hair from his face the same as it does Hector’s. Hector blinks dumbly at him, the light almost glaringly bright through the lenses of his glasses. The stranger’s silhouette only seems to intensify it.

“It’s fine,” he mutters, looking back to the screen. This wasn’t his balcony; it’s not like he has any claim to it. That does nothing to curb his disappointment at no longer being alone.

The door shuts behind him. The man leans back on the railing, facing Hector even as he looks out at the city streets below them. Hector spares a glance at him. He’s pulled his phone out as well, scrolling idly over the touch screen. There’s something oddly familiar about his face, Hector realizes, though he can’t put his finger on it. It eats at him a bit as they sit in comfortable silence embellished by the sounds of late-night traffic and the muffled music from inside. He doubts he would ever be able to put a name to him, but he has the feeling they’ve met before. Indirectly, at least.

He pretends he’s not watching as the stranger pockets his phone and begins to fish for something else. He pulls out what looks like a hand-rolled cigarillo and a lighter. He looks tentatively at Hector, and Hector avoids his eyes. “Do you mind?” he is asked.

“Mind what?”

“If I smoke.” He gestures to the cigarette in his hand, as though for Hector to see better.

“Oh.” He shakes his head. “No.”

“Thanks.” The lighter ignites with a quiet _snick_. He cups his hand over the flame as he lights it. Hector listens as he inhales to catch the end, watches as a plume of smoke leaves his lips on the exhale. It wafts out across the illuminated expanse of the sky. “Rolling a blunt in the same bathroom as people snorting coke is about as stressful as it sounds.”

Hector’s eyes widen. “I’ll take your word for it,” he says lightly, not totally sure how to respond to that. He gets a whiff and instantly knows whatever is burning is most likely not tobacco.

“I’m not sure I’ve seen you before, at things like this.”

“Probably not.” Hector nods his head back towards the apartment full of people. “Do you know everyone else here?”

“Most of them,” he answers. Hector notices he wears several rings on his hands, all of them gleaming silver in the dim light. He’s also not wearing a coat, seemingly unfazed by the cold that renders him huddled over his bent knees where he sits on the ground. “Most of us attended the same school. I can usually recognize faces, even without names. Yours is new, though.”

“My girlfriend brought me.” The word sits awkwardly atop his teeth. _Girlfriend_. Hector smiles wanly. “I’m not actually from the city. I moved here a couple years ago for work.”

He nods. Hector is surprised with himself. Small talk is not something he normally excels at, especially not with anyone he’s just met. Typically he finds it a waste of time, another opportunity to stumble over his words or flounder for the right thing to say. Even then, this is… nice. It’s the closest thing to meaningful conversation he’s managed all night. A refreshing change of pace from being ignored by Lenore and her friends.

“Parties not your thing?”

“Not really,” he chuckles. He wraps his arms around his bent legs, rests his elbows on top of his knees. “How could you tell?”

He blows another plume of smoke out of the side of his mouth. “To be honest, they’re not really mine either.”

Hector wants to ask him what _he’s_ doing here then, if he also would rather be somewhere else. Perhaps he’d been dragged along by somebody as well. Maybe this was his apartment. Maybe it was his balcony Hector has spent the past half an hour occupying.

He takes a few steps closer and when he offers Hector the blunt between his fingertips, Hector simply stares at it. The tip of it glows nearly as brightly as the strange color of his eyes. “I’m Adrian.”

He’s never smoked anything in his life. Never really thought about it, if he were being truthful. So many things reel through his mind. _He shouldn’t. He doesn’t know this man. He might make a fool of himself. Lenore wouldn’t like it._ The last bit sends a tremor through him that has less to do with the cold and more to do with the crawling sensation breaking over his skin.

He takes it.

“Hector.”

He holds the blunt to his lips and breathes in. It burns his throat. He coughs on the exhale, hard, continues to cough and doesn’t miss the tiny smirk on Adrian’s face when he hands it back. Hector takes a long drink, the ginger ale in his cup mostly flat and watered down by now. He thinks his eyes might be watering and he’s glad it’s fairly dark.

“Hector,” Adrian repeats, as though testing the name in his mouth. He takes another drag, far more smoothly than Hector probably ever could hope to. “Hector Mikos?”

His brow furrows at that. “Um. Yes.” A mild panic flares like a lit match behind his sternum. “How do you know that?”

“We’ve, ah… We’ve met.” The strange expression on Adrian’s face, not quite a grimace but far from a smile, only makes him more nervous. He feels like if they’d met before, he would remember. Adrian was… different. He’d probably stand out in a crowd. He passes the blunt back and Hector reaches for it, waits for more of a clarification. “You work for Ţepeş?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I think we ran into each other there. More in a literal sense, rather than figurative.”

It hits him then. The man carrying the box through the lobby. The one he’d nearly bowled over on his way inside. _Excuse me,_ hissed at him, incensed eyes pinning him like a moth beneath glass. The toe of Lenore’s shoe still ghosting up the inside of his calf like a phantom pain. He’d lost his ID badge that day, one more tiny indignity to add to the list he’s been accumulating these past few months. The world had felt like it had been swept out from under his feet that day. In some ways, he supposes it had.

“Oh god.” Mortification nearly blinds him, makes him want to curl into a tight ball and sink straight into the floor. “That was you. Jesus.”

“I thought you looked familiar.” Adrian grins and Hector takes another hit, far deeper than he probably should. He coughs again, but only a little bit.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, almost two weeks after the fact, voice hoarse with smoke. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“I was actually going to apologize to you. It was an accident, no harm done, and I acted like an ass about it. I felt like shit for the rest of the day.”

A spike of indignation sits sharply in his throat. Part of him feels a bit vindicated by Adrian’s admission; he really _had_ been an ass, but even so the apology is appreciated. “It’s fine,” Hector tells him, because he’d really rather just forget about the whole thing.

“It’s not. I’m sorry about that.” He takes the blunt back. “Your name tag fell into the box I was carrying, by the way. That’s how I know your name.”

“What?” Hector asks. He can hardly believe it. “Really?”

“Really. I can get it back to you, if you still need it.”

“I do.” He’s had to check in with Godbrand every single morning for a visitor’s pass at the front desk, still under the delusion that if he continued to look hard enough the damn thing would just show up. If he has to do it for much longer he may just claw his own eyes out. Godbrand was an asshole at the best of times but gloating over the fact he has to check Hector into his own fucking job each day was like a wet dream for him.

Adrian asks him about his job, and it lifts his spirits. Hector likes talking about his job. He probably goes a little too into detail about it, but Adrian doesn’t seem to mind too much. They continue to pass the blunt back and forth between them, though Hector eventually declines it when it’s offered to him again. The smoke settles comfortably into his brain much more quickly than he had been expecting. The smile that grows over his face only seems to widen as they talk. His bones feel heavy in his body, languid as he moves. The cold bothers him less now though he still shivers intermittently.

He’s not sure how much time they pass like that, Adrian once again leaning against the railing. Hector wonders how he’s not freezing pressed against the metal. The collar of his shirt is shockingly low, several of the upper buttons left undone and leaving a sliver of his chest to glow brightly pale in the dark. A few wavy pieces of blond hair slither against the ridge of his collar bones while he speaks, and Hector knows he probably shouldn’t be staring but there’s no possible way Adrian can be warm out here.

The sound of the door sliding open rips him from the easy rhythm of their conversation. His head turns, almost unnervingly slow, to identify just what it was that interrupted whatever it was Adrian was saying. Not that he was totally following him so much as he was just enjoying the relaxed timbre of his voice, the attention he pays to Hector as he talks.

“There you are!”

Lenore’s words cut through him like a knife. Suddenly all the lazy torpor that has softened the edges of his mind seems to dissipate in the air like steam.

* * *

Lenore is, shockingly, not so different from what he remembers. Her hair is longer. Her face is a bit more defined, having lost the subtle, cherubic youth of adolescence. Her clothes are more form-fitting, her nails sharper, her voice not nearly as saccharine but still a little too sweet to the ears.

He watches the change in Hector’s face with detached fascination. In one instant he’d been so undeniably content, clearly stoned, drifting in and out of the moment as easily as the smile that continues to grow on his face. It was almost endearing, or as endearing as a stranger he’s met at a party can be. Then it is all gone the second Lenore opens her mouth. Hector looks stricken, as though he were just caught doing something unspeakable by smoking and talking to Adrian alone on the balcony. He wonders if he’s normally so candid letting every single thought he’s ever had cross his face, or if the weed has made it harder for him to conceal.

 _No,_ Adrian thinks as he watches Hector scramble to stand up, clutching for his cup as he goes. He holds it sheepishly in his hands as he faces her. Adrian can’t see his face anymore from this angle. _Some things don’t quite change._

“You disappeared on me,” she says in what could be interpreted as a good-natured tone of voice. The facetious pout on her face rubs Adrian the wrong way.

“Sorry.” Hector says it too quickly, almost like a reflex. “I, um. I was just getting some fresh air.”

“I see.” She leans to look past his shoulder and when she sees him, Adrian simply gazes back. “Hello, Adrian,” she says cheerfully, as if they were distant friends seeing each other for the first time in years.

“Lenore,” he replies around a smoke-laden breath.

A beat of awkward quiet passes between them. Hector doesn’t seem to notice, his back turned to Adrian the way it is. Lenore makes a show of shivering, hugs her arms around herself in reaction to the cold. “I think I’m ready to leave. How about you?”

Hector does look back at him then, as though there were something else he wants to say. He loses his nerve at the last minute. “I suppose.”

“Find my coat for me, please?”

She smiles up at him, pointedly leaving him no room to argue and something distasteful lodges itself in Adrian’s throat. He hides the pinched quirk it pulls to the line of his mouth behind his fingers. When Hector moves past her to get back into the penthouse Lenore reaches up to touch his face. She pulls him down by the chin and presses a soft, blatant kiss at his cheek, staring at Adrian all the while.

Hector disappears inside, lost to the throngs of people as he goes to look for her coat. Some of the sugar Lenore has dusted herself with seems to fall away. She crosses her arms as she steps further out on the deck. Suddenly the cold no longer seems to bother her as much.

“I didn’t realize the two of you were acquainted.”

“Not really.” He leans back at the elbow on the railing, stretching his spine a bit. “It’s quiet out here. He seemed lonely.”

“Well, he can be a bit shy.”

“He mentioned he was here with his girlfriend.”

“Mm. He is.”

“How long have you been together?”

“A couple of months now.” She tilts her head. The smile at her lips doesn’t quite reach the rest of her face. “Hector’s sweet. We’re very happy.”

The unspoken _So you should go trawling for dick somewhere else,_ is blaringly loud in her moon-darkened eyes. Adrian barely manages to stifle the scoff that leaves his lungs in an acrid huff. “Don’t worry, Lenore,” he drawls. “He’s not my type.”

“That being what? Sad little Belmont orphans that don’t know what they want?”

That nearly shocks him. He blinks at her. Two years ago that definitely would have gotten to him, gone straight through to his heart and wrenched it open and wet like an overripe fruit. It stings a bit, mostly because he had been expecting her to be a little more sophisticated about the whole thing. Outlining the borders of her territory like this, painting “keep out” signs all over the poor idiot drinking ginger ale at the same party where people are doing coke in the bathroom, running off in search of her coat as soon as she snaps her fingers.

Adrian squares his shoulders at Lenore and _almost_ feels sorry for him.

“Sorry,” she mutters, wincing. “That was meaner than I was aiming for. Ignore me; I’m being a bitch.”

“Relax. I’m not going to fuck your boyfriend.”

It’s her turn to be a bit caught off guard. “I didn’t think you—”

"Like I said," Adrian mutters and leans back against the deck railing, the light from inside the building glinting off of his rings, "he's not my type. But he may yet turn out to be yours."

Lenore laughs at that, pretty and tittering behind the knuckles of her hand. " _My_ type, is he? And just what might that be?"

He inhales, smoke filling his lungs as he breathes in. He blows a plume of it in her direction just because he knows it will annoy her. The short-lived vindication he feels at the way she wrinkles her nose is pathetic, but he revels in it all the same. Adrian smiles at her with all the petty indignation he is capable of, aloof and devastatingly beautiful as he answers.

"Un-fucking-fortunate."

Oh, it burns her. He can tell. Adrian feigns a pained, apologetic look. “Sorry. I’m being a bitch.”

Lenore has always been good at hiding whatever it is she never wants other people to see. Whatever she thinks she needs to conceal to get what she wants from someone else. She plays the part of the nice girl so well that there were times he nearly forgot she was just as cutthroat and ruthless as anyone else inside that apartment. But even she is not incapable of letting the mask slip from time to time.

The tiny glimmer of pure rage that glows through the crack in her face is so gratifying. Nearly as gratifying as it might be to _actually_ fuck her boyfriend. He would wear it as a badge of honor if he could.

“Always nice to see you again, Adrian. Hope your family’s well.”

She wins with that one. She doesn’t even have to see the devastation she’s left behind in his face to know that. She merely turns on her heel, the door sliding shut behind her and Adrian seethes. Everyone at this fucking party knew about his mother, and Lenore was no exception. The indignation burns brightly behind his teeth, like a star blocked out by the light pollution that surrounds the city. The little jab about Trevor he could stomach. This he couldn’t.

She leaves him there on the balcony, likely to look for Hector before he again strays too far on whatever leash she keeps him on. Adrian stubs out what’s left of his blunt and pockets it. He’s just stoned enough, just angry enough at her little bull-headed comment to try something entirely childish. He takes a napkin from the kitchen, scrawls his phone number on it with a marker he finds in a drawer.

Lenore is saying goodbye to her friends, Hector forgotten somewhere near the door as she tugs on the coat he’d been sent to hunt down. He’s again staring bleakly at his phone. Adrian hides himself in the crowd of people surrounding them so that she won’t see it when he sidles up behind him to slip the napkin into the pocket of Hector’s jean jacket. He almost hopes she does see him. Doesn’t much care anymore if it lands Hector into trouble.

“If you were wanting your badge back,” he says lowly into Hector’s ear. It startles him a bit, he thinks, because he turns his head just in time to catch the swell of Adrian’s bottom lip at his jaw. Adrian slinks away afterwards but the weight of Hector’s blue eyes behind his glasses is heavy on his back as he goes.

They leave. Adrian mixes himself a vodka soda he does not intend on finishing. He ends up going home with a girl named Maria. She is pretty, smart and sweet in ways that are utterly wasted on someone as damaged as he is. When she invites him back to her place he feels so unworthy of the smile she gives him that he nearly says no. But he goes. He fucks her once against the wall in her living room, then a second time in her bed. Maria asks him for his phone number as he’s getting dressed. He declines, but the guilt that lines his esophagus chases him the whole way home. He kisses her before he leaves.

Someone like Maria could potentially be good for him. He knows this, rationally. She was a good person. She would have cared, perhaps a bit too much. She would have tried to fix him. Adrian doesn’t deserve to be fixed, he thinks, turning on the lights in his apartment. He deserves it even less than she deserves whatever the fuck his issues were now. He wouldn’t wish himself on someone like her.

He’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom, shirtless and cold and looking forward to the warmth of his duvet when his phone vibrates. He spits into the sink, expecting another garbled message from an insomnia-ridden, beer-soaked Trevor. He usually texts Adrian on nights like this because he doesn’t like talking to Sypha when he’s drunk, but the number that flashes across the top of his screen isn’t one that’s saved in his contacts. It’s unfamiliar.

_When could I get my ID?_

The hand holding his toothbrush goes still. That hadn’t taken long.

 _Tomorrow,_ he answers, pressing the send button. He adds a nonspecific _I’ll let you know,_ along with it.

He goes to bed thinking about the reflection of the kitchen light in the silver wire that framed Hector’s glasses.

* * *

“Are you deliberately trying to upset me, Hector?”

His stomach drops to his feet. Outside the apartment building they wait for their ride, and though the wind is nowhere nearly as intense as it had been several floors up, the cold still bites at his chilled fingertips. He clenches them in his pockets.

Lenore is angry. Not simply annoyed, the way she gets when he fails to take an inferred hint or immediately remember whatever mundane detail she might have indirectly given. There is an eerie composure in the way she stands at the side of the curb, her back to him so that he can’t see her face. She won’t look at him and that makes him more nervous than anything else had tonight. He’s never seen her scream, or yell, or throw a tantrum but the controlled pressure of her words tells him this has the potential to be far worse.

“No,” he says honestly. “I just went outside for a minute. I lost track of time, that’s all.”

“Perhaps you should have been paying attention, then.” She rolls her eyes. “Jesus. An entire penthouse full of people and it had to be him to find you.”

Hector’s brow furrows. “Who? Adrian?”

“Yes, Hector. Adrian fucking Ţepeş”

It takes a second or two to sink in. His brain is not quite following as quickly as it normally would, but it all falls into place eventually. He’d known Vlad Ţepeş had a son. He didn’t know his son’s name, or what he looked like. He especially didn’t know which parties he went to, or that he and Lenore knew each other. Perhaps he should have known. Perhaps he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. Perhaps he should have simply stayed at Lenore’s side all evening like he’d apparently been expected to.

The napkin in his pocket catches against his thumbnail. Hector tries to pretend it isn’t there, at least for now.

“I… I didn’t—”

“You didn’t know who he was? Who his father is?” She peers up at him, eyes narrowing as she looks. “God, Hector, are you high?”

Ashamed, he does not answer her. His silence must be response enough. Hector swallows thickly, his gaze falling down at the sidewalk beneath his shoes.

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing.” Hector shakes his head. “He asked me who I was there with, I told him I was with you. It wasn’t anything important.”

She believes him, thankfully, and doesn’t press the matter further. It isn’t until after that he realizes he didn’t tell her about that afternoon at work, or the badge he’d lost. Lenore reaches for his chin.

“You know,” she sighs, sounding genuinely disappointed. “Sometimes I forget just how… unfathomably naïve you are.” Hector stays silent. She pulls him down towards her face and the scent of jasmine fills every available crevice in his skull. He blinks his eyes against it, the glare of the streetlights nearly blinding him as he tries to look at her. The world around them seems just as thick and heavy as his thoughts feel between his ears. “Listen to me, Hector: stay away from Adrian Ţepeş. If you ruin this for me, for _us.”_ One of her nails digs uncomfortably into the skin of his jaw. “For yourself. I’ll ruin you. Do you understand?”

He nods reluctantly. She tuts him, as though that were not good enough.

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” he relents. “I understand.”

He hates the flood of warmth that pools around his heart when she allows him the smallest, barest smile. It is vicious and condescending and poisonously sweet. She pulls him further, kisses him softly on the mouth and fuck him but he kisses her back. When she pulls away her breath is warm against his ear.

“Good boy.”

She doesn’t say it to mock him, and that might be the part that sickens him the most. She means it. And he’s grateful for it. The pleased rush the words inspire in his blood, accomplishment, satisfaction, _relief,_ nearly makes him gag. Hector’s vision turns blurry, blurrier than usual behind the lenses of his glasses, and as they step into the car he does his best to blink it away.

They go back to his apartment; Lenore doesn’t typically like him at her own place this late. He fumbles with his keys for a moment at the door, and he nearly drops them when his neighbor steps out into the hall beside them.

“Oh,” she breathes, a little startled. “Hi.”

Lenore simply looks up briefly from her phone, quietly dismissing the situation with a glance. Hector offers her a terse facsimile of a smile, and she returns it before walking down the hall. He wonders where she could be going this late. He doesn’t ask.

She wants him to fuck her when they get to his room. He doesn’t really want to, and if she knows that then she doesn’t seem to care. He’s tired. Isaac is home, asleep behind the closed door of his bedroom, and Hector hates doing this thinking he might wake up and hear them. He doesn’t say any of this to Lenore, because in the end it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

It isn’t as though he can say no to her, is it?

It’s too much. Too much stress, too much smoke gliding through his head to focus. His skin feels hypersensitive and every touch feels like it’s been amplified through his nerves on its way to his brain. It overwhelms him. He comes far too early and has to ask her to stop, head spinning so fast it makes him dizzy. Lenore stares at him in disbelief and he can’t fucking stand it. Hector turns his head to hide his face, humiliated and trembling as she scoffs up above him.

“Unbelievable,” she hisses as she climbs out of his lap. Hector tries to sit up, to salvage what’s left of his dignity from the mess he’s made of everything.

“I’m sorry,” he offers her. Lenore purses her lips and for a moment he thinks she really might yell at him.

“I’m going home,” she announces, even though she’s already in the middle of pulling her clothes back on.

“Lenore, wait.”

“No. I’m going home, and the next time I see you, Hector, I sincerely hope you get your shit together.” She wrinkles her nose at him. “Ugh, you smell like an ashtray.”

When she’s gone, he sits in the dark for a long, long time. He doesn’t cry but he thinks he comes pretty close at some point.

When he musters the courage to get up Cezar is scratching at his door. Hector lets him in. He strips the sheets from the bed, and if Isaac says anything about his getting up in the middle of the night to stuff them in the washing machine, he’ll have to come up with something other than he simply couldn’t stand to smell her on them anymore, jasmine and citrus and the wine she’d been drinking. It’s the same reason he turns the shower on as hot as it will go, sits under it until it goes cold, and then collapses back into his bare mattress and case-less pillows without so much as waiting for his hair to dry.

His jacket sits in a lump on the floor, and he remembers the hand that had slithered into his pocket before they left. He remembers the clumsy, fleeting brush of Adrian’s lip at his cheek. Remembers that earlier that night Hector had laughed and smiled for what felt like the first time in years.

He needed his ID badge for work. That is the reasoning behind taking the napkin out of his pocket, behind pulling up the number written over it to draft a new message. Lenore didn’t have to know. A small part of him insists against the anxiety that rattles his fingers against the screen, _who cares, let her find out, he’s not doing anything wrong._ It is a cacophony against the rest of his body that screams back at him what she’d said to him before they got in the car.

_Stay away from Adrian Ţepeş._

Hector hesitates, his thumb hovering over the send button. He presses it.

_When could I get my ID?_

It’s done. It’s sent. He plugs the charger into his phone. Adrian is probably in bed, asleep, or far too busy to answer a text message from a stranger, but it only takes seconds for the answering buzz to sound against the wood of his desk.

Hector looks.

 _Tomorrow._ A couple more seconds, and then, _I’ll let you know._

Hector bites his tongue. He has _What time?_ typed out and ready to respond with when he stops. Hits the backspace key until the two words disappear. He’s aching for more specificity, sick of dealing with unknowns and silent signals he’s supposed to pick up on and continues to fail at.

Cezar snuggles warmly against his legs. Hector sighs. He lets go of his phone, sets it back down. He wraps himself in a flimsy throw blanket from his closet and falls into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think :)


	4. Odd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took a while to get out! I've been sort of rotating between projects at the moment, and my schedule for publishing has shifted a bit. None of my current fics have been abandoned though, I promise! I really hope you guys enjoy this chapter :)
> 
> A huge thank you to moonstone-mama for beta reading!
> 
> If any of you are interested, I've made a playlist to go with this fic. You can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTvWXsZ8KjyYtjoUKPYJI3XMT9VI_7DXW).

“Who are you talking to?”

Adrian glances up from his phone. Sypha expectantly tilts her head at him from her seat at the brunch table. Trevor continues to cut away at his pancakes beside her, disinterested in whatever it was they’d been discussing.

He swipes away from the empty message box under the contact name reading ‘Hector.’ “Nobody.” It’s not really a lie; he hasn’t sent him anything yet. Still, the answer seemingly does little to sate her curiosity.

“Nobody, huh?” She leans forward, elbows resting either side of her plate. She cranes her neck to try and get a better glimpse at the screen. He places it face-down in his lap.

They try to meet once a month for Saturday morning brunch. This particular bistro is a favorite of theirs. Trevor knows the owner somehow which is usually enough to net them a free mimosa or two, and it’s within walking distance of Adrian’s apartment. He’d been looking forward to it that morning, if he were being honest. Bubbles float to the top of his glass as he picks it up to drink, its contents more champagne than orange juice. A dash of peach schnapps had been thrown in to try and waylay the lingering headache he’d earned the night before with that last vodka soda.

“Something for work.” That _is_ a lie, however, and he chases the tiny trickle of guilt with another liberal sip from the fluted glass.

“We don’t work at brunch,” Sypha chastises him. Trevor scoffs.

“Weren’t you late? Because you took an extra shift at the rescue?”

She swipes a few syrup-drenched slices of banana from his plate with her fork. Trevor groans in protest as Sypha pops them into her mouth. “Hush, you.”

While they argue, Adrian stealthily uses his thumb to type out and send a line.

_Can you come over at 11?_

He’s barely had time to put his phone in his lap and go back to his eggs benedict before the response vibrates against his thigh.

_Tonight? Where?_

That was fast. He must really need his badge back.

Adrian sends Hector his address.

“Hey! Adrian!”

“Sorry.” He slips his phone into his pocket and throws Sypha a contrite grimace. “I’ll stop.”

“What are you doing later tonight?” she asks him. “Trevor and I were talking about maybe having another movie night.”

“I can’t.” The disappointment in his voice is genuine. He sees it mirrored in her eyes. Sypha pouts in that adorable way that is usually so annoyingly effective in swaying both of the men at the table. “I have plans,” he says in explanation.

“Ah.” Trevor nods in exaggerated understanding. He pretends to whisper in Sypha’s ear, voice thrown for comedic effect. “Dick appointment,” he says smugly. He smirks from across the table.

“No.” Adrian narrows his eyes. “Fuck off.”

“That’s okay.” Sypha smiles at him. “Last minute anyway. There’s always next weekend.”

“I’m free tomorrow,” he offers. “We could go to the farmer’s market.”

Sypha’s face lights up. “Oh, it’ll be so much fun! There’s this new apiary; one of the library regulars brought us some of their honey and it was _incredible.”_

“I’m afraid you’ll have to go without me,” Trevor sighs. “I’ve got church in the morning.”

She scoffs. “Jesus, Trevor. Watching cryptozoology mockumentaries in your underwear is not church.”

“A man’s got to have something to live by, Sypha.”

She pinches his cheek. Adrian uses his fork to steal Trevor’s last strawberry off his plate. He frowns at both of them.

Later, after their bill has been split and the last of Adrian’s mimosa drained from its glass, he allows Sypha to pull him down for a kiss to his cheek. She bids them both a cheerful goodbye before they part ways. Trevor walks with him back to his apartment, since it’s on the way to his train stop. Adrian invites him up.

“You said you have plans tonight?”

Adrian nods as he lights the remainder of the blunt from last night. He inhales, relishing the mild scorch in his throat before passing it off to Trevor. The smoke leaves his mouth as he answers. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Trevor coughs. “Well. Spare me the details, I guess.”

“I’m having someone over.”

He gives Adrian a look. “So… a dick appointment?”

“Stop fucking saying that.” He snatches the blunt out of his fingers. Trevor grins at him like a twat. “No. Not necessarily.”

“You don’t have to lie. I don’t care, and Sypha wouldn’t either.”

“I’m not lying.” Adrian gathers his hair off his shoulders to tie it up. He turns his back to Trevor, legs folding underneath him as he lands on the couch. His phone goes off in his pocket. He ignores it for now. “I met someone last night at a party. He’s coming to pick something up.”

“And you’re not going to sleep with him?” 

“I thought you said you didn’t _care.”_

Trevor raises his hands in deference. He leans his hip over the back of the sofa, accepting the blunt when Adrian offers it again. “You’re right, I’m sorry. You can fuck or not fuck anyone you want to. None of my business.”

 _No,_ he wants to say, _it’s not._ He manages to hold his tongue, wanting earnestly to take Trevor’s apology for what it is even though it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

“This guy, whoever he is,” Trevor starts nervously. “Do you like him?”

“I don’t know.” Adrian purses his lips indecisively. He’s not feeling very forthcoming at the moment, but the champagne and the smoke is making him less inclined to hold back. Honestly, he’s not entirely sure of the answer to that himself. He’d liked Hector enough to talk to him, to share his weed and keep him company. “Maybe.”

“You should ask him out.”

The sleeping void in his chest stutters to life. His lip curls. He fucking hates it when Trevor gets like this. Like he’s trying to push him into someone else’s arms every chance he could. Like he’s desperately trying to make up for all of the disparity between them even as Adrian does his best to sweep it under the rug and _forget._ Like he’s trying to fix him again.

“He’s seeing someone.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. He knows it immediately by the way Trevor stiffens, his eyebrows furrowing into a stern line. His jaw clenches in warning. “Adrian.”

Adrian doesn’t respond immediately. He tilts his head nonchalantly, eyes drifting to stare out of the window. He’s debating whether or not to mention Lenore and what she’d said the night before but decides against it, knowing the way Trevor feels about the people they’d left behind from the academy. It feels like a lifetime ago, but some parts of the past are still too tender to let go of.

_Hope your family’s well._

The jab still throbs under his skin like a bruise.

“Adrian—”

“It’s none of your business.”

“It will be when it blows up in your face and Sypha and I have to pick up the pieces.”

He stares darkly at Trevor, irritated at the way he refuses to back down. Trevor leans over to put out the blunt for them in the ashtray Adrian keeps on his coffee table. He crosses his arms over his chest when he straightens. “I’m not asking you to,” Adrian mutters.

“You don’t have to. You’re my friend, and as your friend I’m asking you to leave this alone. Leave _him_ alone.”

“You seem awfully concerned for someone you’ve never even met.”

“I don’t give a fuck about whoever he is. I care about you, and you’re better than this. You deserve better.”

Adrian scoffs. “Better than what?”

“Better than some empty excuse for a secret behind someone else’s back! This guy has nothing to offer you, Adrian. You’re not a homewrecker.”

“Leave it, Trevor.”

“I can’t.” Trevor shakes his head. The tension between them is palpable, a harsh, back-and-forth tug that dares them to push too far, to cross one of the lines that had been drawn between them long ago. Adrian prickles as Trevor toes it entirely too closely. “It’s painful to watch this, you know. How fucking miserable you are all the time. Seeing all these men walk in and out of here like it doesn’t mean anything to you. Like it’s what you want.”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Trevor,” Adrian spits. His hands tremble in his lap, fingers clenched in rage. Hot, insidious anger courses in his blood. “You made your mistake,” he says coldly. “Now let me make my own.”

The hurt in Trevor’s eyes is gratifying to watch for the split second before it really sinks in what he’s just said. Trevor takes a step back from him. He swallows thickly, as though there was no room left in his throat for the words. “That’s not fair,” he breathes. “I never… you weren’t…”

He glares at Trevor. Dares him to finish that sentence. He doesn’t because what Adrian said is true. That night two and a half years ago had been exactly that: a mistake. An error in judgement, aided by an entire bottle of rye liquor and Adrian’s own poorly managed grief. Adrian doesn’t try to take it back, nor does he really want to. While he knows Trevor still feels guilty, still searches for ways to make it up to him however he can, it doesn’t change anything.

Adrian tears his eyes away from Trevor. He’s past the need for tears at this point, has had plenty of time to work his way beyond them, but the noxious remorse written all over Trevor’s face is just too much to take. It turns his stomach.

“I’m gonna go,” Trevor tells him. He clears his throat. “Um. You’ll do what you want, I guess, but… I’ll see you later. Let me know if you need anything.”

Adrian huffs a short, venomous laugh. It follows Trevor as he walks out the door. He wants to get up and slam it after him, hard enough to crack the plaster in the wall as thoroughly as it feels like his heart has been cracked in his chest.

Trevor’s right. Adrian hates him for that. He didn’t strictly intend on fucking Hector, or even asking him for anything. But Trevor knows him, and Adrian knows himself. He’ll always want what he can’t have. What he shouldn’t reach for.

His phone vibrates again, reminding him he has an unchecked message. Adrian pulls it out. Black-varnished nails glide over the screen to bring up the conversation. His thumb drifts over the characters of Hector’s name. The text reads below, _I can make it,_ and he marvels at the comfort it brings him.

What even was there between them? A stumbled first meeting as he’d run from his father’s office with a box of his mother’s things. A conversation on a balcony at a party. A string of messages that hardly said anything at all. Adrian had seen Hector there, huddled into his jacket and his ginger ale trying to pretend he were anywhere else, and he’d seen just how fucking lonely he himself feels all the time. No matter the party around them, no matter Lenore’s shadow lurking over Hector’s back, or Sypha and Trevor inviting him to brunch. The emptiness that screamed inside of him had looked at Hector and _recognized_ something. And now, he has no idea what to do with it.

The Ţepeş Enterprises ID badge still sits on his dining table, next to the empty cardboard box with Lisa’s name scrawled over the top in his father’s handwriting. For all he knew, this could very well amount to nothing. Hector could stroll right into Adrian’s life, into his apartment to simply snatch his badge back and dart out into the night to return to Lenore, delete Adrian’s number, and act like none of this ever happened. And Adrian wouldn’t blame him.

What did two lonely people have to offer each other, anyway?

* * *

_I can make it._

Hector’s heart races after he sends it. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to properly reply, with the way he’d been going back and forth over the whole thing to himself.

The smart thing to do, he knows, would be to just simply not respond. Lenore’s voice kept speaking to him from the curbside with all of the streetlamps. _Stay away from Adrian Ţepeş._ He should throw away the napkin Adrian had slipped him last night, delete the contact, and simply pay the money for a new ID. He’s debated doing just that for so long that, even though he’d been expecting a knock on the door, he still jumps when he hears it.

Lenore had asked if she could come over for a while that morning. She’d invited herself, really, because, as was the truth with most facets of their relationship, she knows Hector is not exactly in any position to deny her. He waited until Isaac had gone to the gym for the afternoon; Lenore had been right in her initial assessment of him. Isaac did _not_ like her. He’d never outright told Hector as much, but after two years of living together Hector likes to think he at least knows him well enough to see it. He’s never rude to her, but when Lenore is around Isaac carries a guarded tension about him, as though he were simply waiting for her to be gone again.

Hector couldn’t really blame him. He can relate.

Cezar yaps excitedly as Hector answers the door, his tail wagging cheerfully at the sight of Lenore. She greets him before she does Hector. In each hand she holds a disposable coffee cup, a small paper bag dangling between two of her fingers. The lid on one of the cups is already stained with her lipstick.

“I thought,” she says, extending the hand with the bag towards him, “that we could talk over breakfast.”

Hector says nothing in response. Where he’d been expecting a leftover animosity from her, a residual bitterness over the ordeal from the night before, all he sees in Lenore’s face is a tentative cordiality. He’s not sure how to react to it. He simply takes the extra cup and the bag. Looking inside reveals it to be an almond croissant, the cup full of his usual black tea. It’s over sweetened, too much honey, but he takes a sip regardless.

“There weren’t any lemons,” she mentions, almost apologetically.

“It’s fine,” he says quietly, though he does miss the added acidity. “Thank you.”

“Can we talk?”

She sits down at the sofa before he can answer, and suddenly it all starts to make more sense. The timid pleasantries, the tea and the pastry. It was all some kind of peace offering. Hector can remember his mother taking him to an ice cream parlor, once, after she’d thrown him into a doorknob. He’d appreciated it then, as a child, though ice cream had done little to soothe the blackened eye on his face. It hadn’t stopped her from doing it again a month later, either. This feels similar, though the wound is much harder to see.

Lenore takes his hand in hers. She pulls him down next to her, her knee nudging benignly against his as he sits. “The way we left things last night didn’t sit right with me.”

Hector wonders just what part she’s referring to. His leaving her side at the party? The time he’d spent with Adrian? The smoking? The uncomfortable, humiliating sex that had followed? His stomach begins to ache. He doesn’t touch the almond croissant, and it sits forgotten on his coffee table. “I’m sorry,” he says compulsively, because he is. He’s not sure what for. All of it, probably. He really should have known better.

“I wanted to apologize too.”

That might have been just about the last thing he was expecting.

“I was too hard on you.” Lenore sighs. She plops her chin in her hand, staring up at him through her mascara-coated lashes. “The only reason you even went out last night was because I asked you to. I know you didn’t want to go. So, thank you for that. Regarding Adrian, well…”

A surge of nervous energy races through him at Adrian’s name. He thinks back to his phone in his pocket, to the short, clipped conversation stored in his text messages. The address he’d been given for that. “I didn’t know who he was,” he insists. “I swear.”

“I know.” She smiles at him. A tiny, gentle thing. “You wouldn’t lie to me. I shouldn’t have accused you like that. I think I was just so surprised to see him there, it threw me for a loop.”

“You know him?”

“We went to school together.” She shrugs. Takes a sip of her drink. “We weren’t exactly friends. Ancient history; not important. Anyway.” One of her nails starts to trace over the lines in his palm. “Think we can forgive each other?”

He has no fucking clue how to respond to that. It’s mystifying. Never once, since this woman had all but looped a chain around his neck, has Lenore ever entertained the idea that she was to blame for anything in front of him. Everything is _always_ his fault. He’s too naïve, too trusting, too difficult. Too slow on the uptake. And now, here she is, asking for his forgiveness. She brings him breakfast, nearly remembers how he takes his tea, holds his hand in her own like she _cares._

“Yes,” he answers. Lenore grins at him, all straight, white teeth and rosy dimples. She is so beautiful with the autumn sunlight filtering in through the glass door of their balcony to fall on the auburn sheen of her hair. It reminds him of that afternoon in the coffee shop, when they’d first met. It reminds him of the night she’d first kissed him. It reminds him that, once, he’d very nearly fallen in love with her. The truth of that is bittersweet in ways he could never have imagined before.

Lenore leans in closer to kiss him, tugs him lightly down by the collar of his tee shirt to press her lips to his. She tastes of coffee and almonds, smells of cold air and flowers. Hector’s head swims.

“You’re a good boy, Hector,” she murmurs. Internally, it makes his stomach churn, but it also fills him with a mind-numbing wash of relief. “I’m lucky to have you.”

Her hand falls to rest on his thigh. The relief slowly begins to make way for thick, sticky dread. It sits high in his throat, crawling further up his tongue as her fingers inch towards his waistband. Hector gradually begins to pull away. He grips cautiously around her wrist. “Lenore—”

“I thought we might try to make it up to one another.” The words steamroll over the obvious unease in his voice. She scrapes her nails lightly over the front of his jeans. All the blood drains from Hector’s face as his body involuntarily responds despite the anxiety that fills him. She chuckles. “Maybe pick up where we left off last night.”

Hector shakes his head. “Not now, please?” he asks. Begs. His mouth goes dry. He tries to pry her hands away from where they’ve migrated up his shirt and over his middle.

Lenore blinks at him. Bewildered. “Hector.”

He tries not get overly hung up on the sexual aspect of all of this, of their “agreement” as Lenore sometimes calls it, as that is simply more grief to pile on top of his shoulders at her behest. He simply does what she asks when she asks it of him, and that is generally enough to keep his head above water. He’s tried to tell himself it’s not so bad. Going through the motions is easy enough and, according to Lenore, he’s apparently fairly good at it. As fucked up as it is, he can find something to be proud of there. Even if it makes him sick.

“I’m just tired.” Panic starts to bounce its way through his limbs, humming through his nerves like wasps. He hopes she doesn’t notice his hands shaking. “I… didn’t sleep very well last night.”

Lenore scoffs. She toys with the button of his jeans. When she touches him through them, he jumps. Badly. “Hm. You don’t seem tired.”

He doesn’t want this. It’s all he can think as she leans in, her hair soft against his face and her hands frigid over his skin. He’d been telling the truth. He _is_ tired. He _hasn’t_ slept well. He’s exhausted, stretched thin between work and the Styria code, and Isaac could walk in the door at any minute to find them like this. “Stop,” Hector says very quietly. She continues to touch him, as though she hadn’t heard him, her lips grazing against his earlobe. She doesn’t stop.

It makes his fucking skin crawl.

_“Get off of me.”_

Hector pushes her away. He snatches her hands out from underneath his clothes and _shoves_ her to the other side of the couch. Lenore makes an affronted noise as she lands on the armrest, almost like a yelp. An array of expressions paints its way over her face, blending together like watercolors. Shock starting in her wide, warm eyes. Her lips gape for a moment in disbelief as she sits there, stunned. Seconds later they twist into a scowl, her nose wrinkling in anger. Her dainty chin sets as she bares her teeth at him.

Hector freezes where he sits. He stares at her, all the possible consequences of what he’s just done shuttering at his mind’s eye. The video, the fire, the caustic bite of her fury. He’s afraid. Terrified.

“I’m sorry,” he says, for what feels like the hundredth time. As long as he knows her, he will always be sorry for something. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

The shrill ring of her voice is dwarfed by the resounding _clap_ of her palm against his cheek.

It dazes him. Rattles his eyes in their sockets and his teeth in his skull. It feels as though the very breath has been slapped out of his throat. Hector’s glasses manage to stay on his face, but it is a near thing. They’re jostled to sit askew over the bridge of his nose, and he hopes silently that she hasn’t broken them. Heat begins to well under his skin in the shape of her hand. It burns.

The swift, violent motion of Lenore’s arm scares Cezar. He whimpers at their feet before diving underneath the couch, scurrying along the floor on his belly to hide. It wrenches at Hector’s heart. The tears that scald his eyes were a reflex at having been hit, but as he calls his dog’s name in an attempt to soothe him his voice cracks. The tears sting as they glide over his cheek.

“My God,” Lenore mutters coldly, “are you crying?”

She tries to reach for his face. Hector dodges her hand. He gapes at her. It is still sinking in that she has just _struck_ him. He lifts his fingers to the point of contact and finds the skin to be unnaturally hot, sore and tender to the touch. Lenore’s eyes are still so incensed, so vicious that he can practically feel himself shrinking under them. He suddenly feels very small again, the child he’d once been as he’d cowered under the whim of his parents’ collective anger. Helpless to it.

Lenore sighs. Her hand moves again, and again he backs away from her. “Let me see it, Hector.”

The severity in her voice convinces him to relent. He lets her touch him though every cell in his body compels him to push her away again. She snatches his hand out of the way, tilts his face toward her for a better view. He refuses to meet her eyes.

“It’s just red. You’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t feel fine.

“Oh, please don’t sulk.” Lenore lets go of his chin. Hector sees her eyes roll and is filled with such marked disbelief it leaves him speechless. She has just slapped him, hard enough to leave a mark, and now she is telling him not to _sulk._ “Listen, I—fuck. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. But don’t you _ever_ try to put your hands on me again, Hector.”

It’s not an apology. It’s not a promise to never do it again. It doesn’t mean anything. The hypocrisy of what she says actually almost makes him sick; she’d been the one with her hands on _him,_ even after he’d told her to stop, and he has no choice but to take the blame. The contempt that builds within him is checked before it has the chance to bubble past his lips. It sits like acid at the top of his tongue.

Lenore shows herself out. She presses a cruel kiss to the still aching side of his face, tells him not to worry about the code or the servers that night. As though it were an olive branch: a small reprieve from the work she is blackmailing him to do, after she hit him for refusing her sex. She takes her coffee cup with her, the door clicking shut after she leaves. Hector had expected to feel comforted by her absence, but the gravity of what has just happened robs him of that. The apartment is silent as he sits, frozen on his couch with his hand glued to his face, cold tears drying over his skin.

The initial astonishment begins to wear off, even if the pain in his face doesn’t. Hector spends several minutes on his living room floor trying to convince Cezar to come out from underneath the sofa. He considers the possibility of lifting the couch but decides against it, worried it might just scare him more. The poor dog won’t be budged, no matter how soft Hector’s voice or what promises he makes in the way of treats or a walk. It wounds him. Cezar simply stares at him with his lone eye wide with fear. It should unnerve him, the fact that this was what upset him the most about the past few minutes, but it was. Eventually he gives up, resigning himself to allow Cezar a little while longer to calm down before trying again.

He dumps the tea down the sink, unable to convince himself to drink the rest. The almond croissant meets its end at the bottom of the trash can. A quick glance in the mirror shows him the bright, red handprint emblazoned across his cheek. Hector wraps a handful of ice cubes in a kitchen towel. It helps to alleviate the ache somewhat, and when he steps out on the balcony the cold air feels less for once like it’s trying to eat him alive. It’s almost soothing, the chilly wind buffeting against the weariness and the discord that whirls under his skin. Hector sits in their lone patio chair, tucking his sock-clad feet underneath him as he watches the city below in the autumn afternoon.

There is a noise off to his side. He whips his head around to see and is met with the acrid scent of cigarette smoke.

There, leaning over the railing of her own balcony, stands his neighbor. She’s barefoot in the cold, the cigarette dangling from between two fingers. In her other hand is a short glass full of something amber colored. She’s gazing intently at him, eyes lingering at the makeshift ice pack in his fist. Her hair flutters around her face. It’s red. Not the subtle, perfectly blended auburn he associates with Lenore, but well and truly ginger red. The sound had been her clearing her throat, as though to let him know she was there.

She takes one look at him and puts out her cigarette without even finishing half of it.

“You don’t have to do that,” Hector tells her quietly. “I won’t be out here for very long.”

She smiles at him. “It’s fine. I quit two years ago, anyway.”

He laughs at that. It sounds miserable and pitiful as it leaves his throat, but it’s at least somewhat genuine. “So I see.”

She gives him a guilty wince, grimacing as she takes a sip from her glass. “Don’t tell my sister?” she asks. He shakes his head.

“I won’t.”

“Thanks.”

She offers him nothing else but blessedly idle silence for several moments. The two of them stare down into the street below, watching the cars and pedestrians as they pass by. Hector swallows nervously. The heat of Lenore’s mark on his cheek slowly begins to diminish to a dull throb.

“How much of that did you happen to hear?”

His neighbor shifts her weight on her feet, turning her body to better face him. She smiles, but the green of her eyes is ringed with sadness.

“Enough.”

She offers him her glass. Bewildered, Hector takes it. There’s little more than a mouthful left, and he drinks it quickly. Whiskey, he realizes. He has no idea how to tell what kind or how good it is, but it burns on its way down and that is enough. He hands the glass back to her, struggling not to cough.

“Listen.” Her voice is soft. Kind. “If things ever start to feel like they’re too much, or even if you just want to talk, all you have to do is knock.”

“... Thank you.”

He’s not sure what to feel about that. Despite having been neighbors for two years, they don’t know each other. He doesn’t even know her name. He doubts he’ll ever take her up on that. But it takes a fraction of the weight off of his shoulders to realize that someone else _knows._ That someone else might just have caught a glimpse.

She goes back inside her apartment, leaving Hector on his own. It’s strange. Being alone, and yet feeling a little less lonely.

Isaac comes home eventually. After nearly half an hour of sitting on the balcony and feeling sorry for himself, the door swings open to reveal his roommate, confusion apparent in his face. “What are you doing out here?” he asks curiously. He seems puzzled to find him outside, perfectly aware of just how much Hector hates the cold.

“Nothing.” Hector stretches his legs to stand. “Just wanted some fresh air.”

“Your face.” Isaac nods to the towel in his hand. He moves from the door to let Hector back in. He has to admit, the warmth of their apartment is a welcome change. Sitting out there so long, he hadn’t realized just how stiff or cold he’d grown.

“I fell,” he lies, waving a hand dismissively. “Hit my cheek on the way down.”

Isaac says nothing. He simply looks at Hector, eyes darting from his face to his hand. While he is typically on a good day difficult to read, now it might as well be impossible. “Where’s Cezar?”

“It scared him. I’ve been trying to get him to come out from under the couch.” Hector once again goes to his knees to peer underneath and finds Cezar still firmly lodged there. “Can you help me? It might be easier with the two of us.”

It takes several minutes, as well as the aid of multiple favorite toys and _maybe_ an extra hand to help lift the couch, but they do manage to coax Cezar to join them again. He curls up in Hector’s lap, still frightened, still shivering. Isaac reaches down to pet him and Cezar tilts his head towards him to welcome it.

Later, Hector reroutes Adrian’s messages to come through another app. He puts a password on his phone, something he’s never thought to do before. He tries to think of something else to say, another message to send, but decides against it, opting to simply go back to bed instead.

The still tender side of his cheek smarts against the cotton of his newly washed pillowcase, and he hopes that the red brand of Lenore’s hand will fade before he leaves that night.

* * *

Adrian calls Brandon to ask him over less than an hour after Trevor leaves. He does it to appeal to the petty, vindictive part of his personality that only ever seems to surface when his pride has been hurt. Adrian seeks Brandon out because he knows Trevor would _hate_ him. It was stupid and childish, like he was trying to get back at Trevor while falling into the same pattern he’d been called out on. Adrian decides he doesn’t much care.

What the fuck did Trevor Belmont know about what it was he wanted?

Brandon tells him he can be by that evening once he’s done with work. Adrian doesn’t ask him anything trivial, like where he works or what time. He just sends his address again in case he’s forgotten since the last time they did this.

He spends the rest of the afternoon waiting. He showers, moisturizes his skin with an orange blossom infused body cream Sypha gave him for his last birthday. He even takes the time to style his hair a bit, runs his fingers through it until it hangs around his face in deliberately messy waves. He feels absolutely awful, but he looks devastating in the low lights of his apartment as the sun starts to go down.

When he buzzes Brandon into the building, answers the knock at the door, he knows exactly what he wants from this. Brandon shuts the door behind himself. Adrian doesn’t even have time to ask if he’d like a drink, to suggest he open a bottle of wine before he’s crowded against the wall of his entryway. His back hits it so quickly it almost knocks the wind from him. Brandon’s teeth graze their way down the length of his throat. Adrian gasps, head reeling.

“I was wondering when I’d hear from you.”

He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t really get a chance to before there are hands at his hips, thumbs digging their way past the waistband of his lounge pants. One of them makes it to the crease of his thigh. It sends a thrill straight through to the pit of his stomach. Brandon continues to drag his incisors over the meat of Adrian’s shoulder.

Without warning, Brandon grabs at his elbow to twist him, turning Adrian so that his knees knock over the wall and his cheek is pressed flat against it. He reaches past Adrian’s clothes to curl his hand around him. It startles him, the abrupt roll of his hips as much a product of shock as it is a bid for more. Brandon thrusts the hard line of his cock into the curve of his ass.

“Did you need it again that badly?”

The familiar, acerbic twinge of indignation floods his mouth like poison. He fights down the compulsion to snap back, because as demeaning as it is to accept, this was what he’d _wanted._ This was exactly why he’d gone to Brandon. He feels like shit, and he wants a reason for it other than the kicked-dog look in Trevor’s eyes when he’d been forced to admit the truth.

A fingertip swipes its way over the head of his dick. Adrian takes a blistering breath, nails scrabbling against the white plaster. Brandon noses at the golden hair tucked behind his ear.

“Well, Adrian?”

“Yes,” he mutters bitterly. The word fights its way past his teeth. He can feel Brandon’s smirk at the nape of his neck. It scalds him.

A minute or two more of fumbling, Brandon’s hands roaming all over his body as Adrian pants against the wall. Eventually he’s whirled around again to the sight of a heavy lidded stare, the same smirk he’d felt on his skin firmly in place on Brandon’s face. The heat of his breath fans over Adrian’s cheek.

Those hands grip at his shoulders, slowly but firmly pushing him down.

Adrian goes all too willingly.

He tears at the belt buckle that sits eye-level with him. The yawning chasm in his chest stutters in time with his fingers over the button of the denim, screeches with the quiet sound of the zipper. Adrian wets his lips, rotates his jaw in anticipation of the stretch.

A fist nestles itself into his hair, tugs up so that he stares into Brandon’s eyes. Adrian’s mouth falls open in an involuntary moan.

With his unoccupied hand, Brandon tugs down the front of his briefs. His cock slips free and a bright, sick spark of heat ignites in Adrian’s gut. He strains in Brandon’s grip, cranes his neck to try and get his mouth on it but the fingers in his hair hold him fast. To his own disappointment, he makes a wanton sound at the subtle pain of being pulled back.

Brandon chuckles. “What a fucking picture you make like this.”

A thumb traces over his lips. Adrian meets it with his tongue, licking at the pad of it like he’s asking for permission. Like he’s begging. He supposes he is.

“Do you want my cock, Adrian?”

He nods, equal parts humiliated and desperate. The jostling of his head snags against the fingers in his hair. “Yes,” he whispers against Brandon’s thumb. He’ll play this game again if he has to. He’s good at it. He knows he’s good at it. “I want it.”

“Good. Say please for me.”

Adrian has to school his expression before it falls into a scowl. Even with the effort, he’s not entirely sure he manages it. From the smirk that tugs at Brandon’s mouth, he is starting to believe he’s enjoying that about this. _“Please,”_ he mutters through clenched teeth, glaring straight into his eyes as he says it.

Brandon takes his cock in hand. Rests the head of it against the plush give of Adrian’s bottom lip. “Open up. I’m going to wreck that pretty face.”

The fingers at his scalp keep him in place. Brandon slowly tilts his hips forward and Adrian’s eyes flutter closed as he takes it. Once his mouth is full he braces himself, gripping at the front of Brandon’s thighs as he attempts to breathe through his nose. He swallows tentatively. His tongue glides along the underside, teasing at the vein and the sensitive ridge of the crown. Brandon groans above him.

He begins to pull Adrian’s head closer, slowly feeding him the remaining length of his cock inch by inch. He hesitates every few seconds, as though expecting Adrian to tap out or pull away. He doesn’t.

Adrian’s eyes water when Brandon meets the back of his soft palate. He wishes he could bob his head, but he can’t. He sits perfectly still, fingers digging into the denim of Brandon’s jeans as he gradually starts to fuck his mouth. It’s not brutal; Adrian’s definitely had it rougher, but it’s been a while since he’s had anything so far down his throat. He coughs quietly at first, struggling to keep it together, but eventually it just becomes a rhythm. The grind of Brandon’s hips into his face, the tightening and loosening of the grasp in his hair, the gentle slide of his knees against the hardwood floor. It’s easy to lose himself in it.

Minutes later, he’s a fucking mess. Reflexive tears stream from his eyes. Saliva drips past his lips to trail over his chin and down his neck. His face feels hot, no doubt flushed pink from the exertion. The anger from earlier that day still simmers behind his breastbone, and as Brandon thrusts a little harder than before, fits himself that much further down Adrian’s throat, he petulantly wishes Trevor Belmont could see him now. On his knees and sucking cock for a man he can hardly stand.

The satisfaction that rises in him at that thought is so startlingly dark it makes him _shudder._

Brandon quickly pulls back, his hand gripping firmly around the base of his shaft. Adrian absentmindedly chases his cock, tongue peeking past his lips in a last attempt. It makes Brandon chuckle. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathes. “Look at you. I’m tempted to just come all over your face.”

Adrian glares at him. “I would strongly advise against that,” he says coldly, fingers digging harshly into Brandon’s legs. The hoarseness of his own voice almost stuns him. He starts to fidget against the hand in his hair. He’s happy to play along up to a point, but there are still lines he refuses to see crossed.

“Don’t worry.” The levity in his tone sets Adrian’s temper on edge. Like this is all one big, overconfident joke to him. Brandon lets go of his hair to grab at his elbow instead, hauling him to his feet. “I want your ass again.”

Adrian’s neglected cock throbs against his leg.

After a brief foray for lube and condoms, Brandon bends him over his kitchen island. He pushes Adrian’s fruit bowl out of the way, plants a hand firmly between his shoulder blades to shove him down. Adrian huffs out a breath as he lands. His soft sweatshirt is pulled up and over his head to tangle around his wrists, the flimsy silk of his lounge pants to pool at his ankles.

The shock of cold lube dripping past his tailbone is juxtaposed to the scorching tongue that slides up his spine. Adrian shivers. When Brandon reaches the back of his neck he sweeps his hair to the side, sets the edge of his teeth into tender flesh until Adrian shouts. It hurts, and it’s good. The pain sings along his nerves to the same frequency as the void in his chest until it almost numbs it away.

The fingers that Brandon unceremoniously shoves inside of him surprise him more than anything. They don’t exactly hurt; he doesn’t really even need them, but it’s another layer of sensation to add to the already mounting tension deep in his stomach. Adrian’s cock hangs heavy between his thighs. He squirms, tempted to untangle one of his hands to reach down and touch himself when Brandon grabs him by the nape, pinning him there against the countertop.

“Work for it.”

For a moment, Adrian simply blinks in disbelief. Annoyance lances through him as he realizes Brandon means for him to fuck himself on his fingers. It festers under his skin when he reluctantly tips his hips back to do it. A tiny pang of shame flickers to life between his ribs while he moves, not enough to convince him to stop but just enough to muddy the potential swell of pleasure that warms him at each lurch of his body. Adrian can feel Brandon’s eyes on him, watching him, can hear the coarse, ground out _“fuck,”_ sharp in the otherwise quiet air, its only accompaniment the muffled sounds of Adrian’s skin.

He hisses when Brandon gets a grip in his hair again.

“Your place has some nice windows.” He lifts Adrian’s head from the counter, forcing him to stare ahead. Outside the apartment, the city lights glimmer back at them from the vast curtain of night. The windows in question make up most of the wall, their tall, arched panes beautiful in the gloom. “Maybe I’ll drag you over there. Press you up against the glass for everyone on the street to see. Let them watch while I fuck you.”

The fingers inside him crook and Adrian is suddenly so close to coming he can taste it. He shouts, shoulders slumping, cheeks burning as Brandon’s words wind themselves into a knot low in his belly. He bites at his lip, hard enough to bruise, trying to stifle the embarrassing thrill that shivers through him at the thought. Brandon’s cock is a hot, hard weight at the back of his thigh.

“Would you like that, Adrian?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, do you always take this long to actually _fuck_ anyone?”

It’s bitchier than he means for it to be, which is saying a lot. He’s fast approaching the end of his patience with this particular encounter, with Brandon in general. He can’t tell if it pisses him off, decides he doesn’t really care as long as this goes where he needs it to. The fingers leave him, the hand in his hair dropping him to press his face back down to the counter. Brandon kicks his feet further apart. Adrian nearly sobs with relief when he hears the foil wrapper tear.

“Frigid fucking bottom.”

They’re both lucky Brandon decides to bury himself to the hilt in that instant, as Adrian is fully prepared to turn at the waist and slap the absolute shit out of him. He’s primed to do it, one of his hands pried out from the tangle of his shirt to strike, but the first thrust hits straight home and he buckles. The anger courses alongside the pleasure in his blood, roars in his ears as he grits his teeth in a deep groan. It mingles with the lingering animosity he still feels toward Trevor, with the hatred still aimed at himself, a toxic cocktail that almost chokes him. All he can do as it consumes him is hold on.

Brandon grabs his freed hand, twists Adrian’s arm around to his back to use as leverage while he fucks him. There’s no courtesy pause for his body to adjust, no hesitation in the slam of Brandon’s hips against the curve of his ass. The percussion of skin on skin nearly drowns out the ache in his chest.

“Harder,” he moans, cheek scraping against the butcher’s block wood of his countertop. “Fuck me harder.” He wants it to hurt. Wants to feel something other than the hollow anguish between his ribs. Brandon obliges. The pace of his hips turns vicious, each punishing thrust a bright burst of pain in comparison to the liquid bliss that pools at the back of his mouth. Adrian pants, almost loses his breath, his head growing heavy as he writhes. It’s everything he’d asked for and nothing he’d wanted.

The hand in his hair lets go to curl around his cock instead, the looming shadow of his orgasm close behind. Adrian can feel tears in his eyes as it coils behind his navel. A finger smears over the wet head of him and he tries to buck into it, tries to chase the hairsbreadth between this moment and the next.

Brandon’s thumb brushes over the scars at the inside of his wrist. Adrian sputters.

“Oh, you really like it to hurt, don’t you?”

He has no time to react because in the next second he’s coming, already too near to the edge for even something as gut-wrenching as the misery that wells up in the wake of the words to interfere. The sound it tears from him is not quite a scream, but it’s close. The euphoria he’d been skirting is darkened by honest, harrowing shame. Tears spill past his lashes at the same time as he spills into Brandon’s hand and then he falls, boneless, lungs burning with the effort it takes not to sob.

He’s grateful when he feels Brandon finish as it’s one step closer to getting him the fuck out of his apartment. He grunts one last time, the cut of his teeth digging into the wing of Adrian’s shoulder blade as he shudders through those final, shallow thrusts. Adrian wrenches his arm away from him, wincing at the flex of his shoulder.

He graciously allows him an extra few seconds to recover before he starts to fidget underneath him. Brandon eventually takes the hint. It actually hurts when he pulls out, the friction against Adrian’s oversensitive prostate bordering on agony.

“Hard enough for you?”

“God, do you _ever_ shut up?”

Adrian grabs up his clothes. His entire body hurts: his throat is hoarse from abuse, his back sore from being bent over, but worst of all is the wound to his pride. He turns his face so Brandon can’t see the wet tracks on his cheeks. On shaky legs, Adrian climbs the stairs to his bathroom to attempt to sort himself out.

It’s almost eleven.

10:48 PM to be exact, his phone informs him. He also has a text from Sypha.

_Trevor told me you two fought today :(_

He loves Sypha, he truly does, but he cannot feasibly deal with this right now. He cannot force himself to try and accept whatever apology Trevor is trying to get to him through her, or listen to her genuine, if misplaced, attempts to patch the dissonance between them. She knows about the past he shares with Trevor. Has known for years. And while Adrian would like to stow it away, Sypha would always insist they work through it and he will always refuse. He doesn’t have a clue how she and Trevor discuss it, but he wants no part of it.

The message goes ignored for now. He will see Sypha in the morning to shop for plums or mushrooms or those tiny cookies she likes from a nearby bakery, and when she inevitably tries to bring it back up he’ll find a way to avoid the subject then and there.

His hair is a disaster. The meticulously messy waves he’d so carefully styled before are now just a mess. It’s tangled where greedy hands have pulled, some of the pieces near his face damp with both saliva and lubricant. In the end he decides to just throw it up into a knot at the top of his head and deal with washing it all out in the morning.

A few more minutes to splash cold water over his face and wipe the traces of sweat, tears, and lube from his skin, and Adrian throws his clothes on to go back downstairs. Brandon has helped himself to a glass of water. He stares boredly at his phone, not so much as lifting his head to acknowledge Adrian. Now that the muddled frenzy of sex has worn off, what had transpired between them sits awkwardly in the light of Adrian’s kitchen.

Adrian sets about trying to tidy as well as he can, tossing the condom wrapper and putting away the box it came from, as well as the opened bottle of lube. They disappear into the drawer of his coffee table and with them he tries to bury his hurt feelings. It doesn’t work.

He feels empty. Wrung out and dry in the glaring silence of his apartment, the stranger in his kitchen an oppressive weight on his psyche. Adrian wants to snarl at him. Hurl an insult or two and kick him out, scream down the hall at him as he goes. He worries at the skin beneath the sleeve of his sweatshirt with his fingers, tracing over the deliberately carved scars there with a pseudo tenderness he almost means.

Fucking Trevor had obviously been a mistake. Fucking Brandon had turned out to be a mistake. Inviting Hector to his apartment would inevitably prove to be a mistake. One after the other, one for each raised line in his skin. It’s a morbid thought.

He’s in the middle of packing a bowl in his water pipe when the unit’s intercom goes off, and Adrian wonders if that is simply his next grievous lapse in judgement calling his name

* * *

The address Adrian gives to him is, luckily, within walking distance of his own place. Hector had thrown on a jacket before quietly slipping out, grabbing up his wallet and keys to lock up behind himself. He throws a wistful glance towards his neighbor’s door before he leaves. She doesn’t appear again, like she had the night before, and her words from earlier that afternoon still linger in his ears.

He leaves Cezar sleeping soundly on his bed, nestled safely against one of his extra pillows and blissfully ignorant to the fact that Hector himself is gone. It hadn’t felt completely right leaving him after what had happened that afternoon, but he would be back. Isaac was still home should he start to feel lonely. He always liked to insist Cezar stay out of his room, but Hector knows for a fact that if the dog were to scratch long enough, whine in just the right way, the door to Isaac’s bedroom magically cracks open on occasion.

The walk is, fortunately, not that long. Fifteen minutes at most. This late at night, foot traffic has dwindled, not to a complete stop but something he can easily navigate without too much trouble. The apartment building his GPS leads him to seems to be older. Hector shivers as he searches the intercom panel for the unit number Adrian had sent him, eager to be out of the cold. This late at night, the city has been sapped of any leftover warmth the sun might have lent it during the day. He presses the correct button and seconds later he hears the doors unlock.

The building might have looked a bit decrepit on the outside, but inside it has clearly been very recently renovated. The wood floors of the lobby gleam in the fluorescent lights, the vaulted ceilings helping his footsteps to echo as he makes for the elevator.

There is a tentative few minutes between his arrival to his floor and the walk to Adrian’s door where Hector is tempted to run back home. That would be the smart thing to do. He had every reason to stay well away from Adrian Ţepeş. Lenore’s warning sits heavy in the back of his throat, as does the knowledge of who Adrian’s father is. This has every possibility of truly falling to pieces around him, everything he’s worked so hard for his entire life disappearing in a cruel puff of smoke.

It would be so easy, though. Knock on the door. Get his badge. Go back home. Delete Adrian’s number. Go to work on Monday morning like nothing has happened. Continue to be miserable beneath Lenore’s thumb.

It hardly takes any more convincing at all to rap his knuckles at the varnished wood of the door.

Hector’s heart races. Paranoid, he peers up and down the hallway almost as though he’s expecting someone to pop out at any second and catch him here, doing _exactly_ what he is in no way supposed to be doing. But it doesn’t happen.

What does happen is the door eventually opens, and Adrian’s face peers at him from the other side to greet him. He appears to be dressed for bed, or for a night in. Gone are the rings from the night before, the open shirt and skin-tight trousers. The clothes he wears now look comfortable, his hair pulled up off his neck. Hector almost feels guilty for coming over so late.

“Hello.”

Hector fidgets nervously. He’s glad his hands are still firmly planted in his pockets or he’d be wringing them together. “Hi.”

Adrian swings the door a little wider before he nonchalantly turns away. Hector takes that as an invitation. He steps inside and lets it close behind him.

The space inside is incredible. The floors are patterned, glossy, old-fashioned wood. The walls of the entryway are paneled white plaster while the one set into the exterior of the building is exposed red brick. The brick surrounds a number of tall windows flanked by long, heavy drapes. They’re open at the moment, revealing the glittering cityscape on the horizon. The ceiling is almost unnervingly tall, and as Hector steps further inside he realizes it is because the apartment is, in fact, a loft.

He is so consumed with taking in his surroundings that he doesn’t right away notice the man in Adrian’s kitchen. He is leaning coolly against the counter. He gives Hector a peculiar face over the rim of the water glass he drinks from.

“Oh.” Hector turns his head to where Adrian has crossed the room into the living area. “I didn’t realize anyone else was here.”

“That’s fine. He was just leaving.”

The man gapes at Adrian. Something flashes over his expression that Hector can’t quite read, and he scoffs. His eyes again narrow in Hector’s direction. “Okay.”

Adrian doesn’t even bother to look up at him.

The obvious tension that simmers between them as he opens the door to leave is thick enough to make even Hector uncomfortable. He finds himself relieved that the man is gone. He lets his eyes wander a bit more, admiring the architecture of the place. The walls are decorated with so much artwork the space could almost double for a gallery. All the furniture feels lived in and unique, as though every piece had been handpicked.

It would be beautiful, he thinks, if it weren’t for the intermittent patches of clutter all over the place.

The apartment seems clean enough; there’s no outrageous amount of dust, no odd smell or grime that he can see. There’s just. Stuff everywhere. Like everything clearly had a space, a place it was supposed to go, but somehow ended up somewhere else. The most organized part is an office area, and Hector realizes he still doesn’t really know what it is Adrian _does._

His gaze drifts towards the kitchen. The sink is piled full of dishes. Hector bites his tongue in an effort not to fixate on it.

“It’s on the table.”

Adrian’s voice snaps Hector out his own thoughts. He turns his head to face him. “What?”

“Your badge.” Adrian gives him a tiny smile. “On the table, next to that box.”

To Hector’s chagrin, he recognizes the box. It had been the one he’d nearly knocked out of Adrian’s arms that day at the office. The white plastic of his ID glares at him over the stained wood of the dining table. His own picture stares back at him as he comes closer, familiar as the name emblazoned underneath it. To feel it in his hand again is an unexpectedly powerful relief. Already he has to admit he’s looking forward to Godbrand’s face come Monday morning.

“Thank you,” he tells Adrian. “I thought I’d lost it for good.”

“Lucky you, I suppose.”

He laughs at that, slipping the badge into his pocket and back where it belongs. Adrian doesn’t realize the irony behind it, but it doesn’t escape Hector. He hasn’t felt very lucky as of late.

He supposes he should be going now, and he has every intention of doing just that when the clinking of glass catches his attention. In Adrian’s hands is something he recognizes as a pipe, tall and made of blown glass. Hector’s seen one before, spent long enough at university to recognize it for what it is, but has never seen one in use.

Adrian must notice his staring because he raises a brow at Hector as he fiddles with it. “Do you want to smoke?” he asks, pointing at the pipe. “I’ve just loaded it.”

“Um.” He asks it so casually that Hector almost misses it. He scrambles to come up with a response. “I don’t… I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Adrian shrugs. “You’re not. And I’m offering.”

Hector knows he shouldn’t. This was not the plan. The opposite of the plan, actually, if he were being honest. He has his badge. He should go home. He should _leave._

Suddenly the shape of Lenore’s hand throbs at his cheek again. The red mark was gone, but the skin where it had been was still tender to the touch. With the ghostly pain comes the memory of that afternoon. Of the taste of overly sweet tea on his tongue. Of her hands under his clothes. Of the humbling mortification he’d thought he’d left in the past.

“Sure. Okay.”

“You can sit down if you want. I’ll be just a minute.”

Hector learns he likes smoking from the pipe far better than he does a blunt. Adrian fills the neck of the pipe with ice to tame the burn of the smoke. He shows Hector how to light it and when to inhale. By the second hit his eyes feel heavy in their sockets, his thoughts comfortably slow in his head. He watches Adrian take his own hit, the bubbling of the water a mirthful sound in his ears. The air in Adrian’s living room is hazy. He’d turned on some music that Hector doesn’t really recognize but he thinks he likes it.

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” Hector asks him from where he sits on the sofa. Adrian is tucked into an accent chair to his left. “After I told you where I worked.” He surprises himself with his own directness. Adrian gives him a guarded expression. He exhales a cloud of smoke.

“I told you my name.”

“Not your family name. Or who your father was.”

Adrian stares at him for a few quiet seconds. If he weren’t already so relaxed, Hector might have felt self-conscious about it. “My father and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”

Even through the fog in his brain, Hector knows to leave that well enough alone. “Oh.”

“Did Lenore tell you that?” Adrian asks. There’s an impish quirk to his lips. Not for the first time that day, Hector finds himself curious as to whatever the obvious past between them was.

“Yes.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“Nothing, really. That the two of you were in school together. She called it ‘ancient history.’”

“It’s not that ancient. Whatever. Not that interesting either.”

“Were you friends?”

Adrian laughs. “No.”

To Hector’s disappointment, he drops it after that. Maybe someday Lenore will feel generous enough to indulge him in just whatever it was that founded her disdain for Vlad Ţepeş’ son, other than the company his father oversaw.

“I forgot to ask last night what you do for work. Since you know about what I do.”

Adrian sets the pipe down on his coffee table. “I’m a digital illustrator and graphic designer. I freelance.”

“You’re an artist?” Hector leans forward in his seat, interest suddenly piqued. His eyes rove over all the art on the walls, wondering if perhaps Adrian had done any of them himself. “Did you paint any of these? Are they yours?”

“Some of them. I don’t paint much anymore, not with traditional mediums, but a lot of them are older.”

Several of them catch his interest. There’s one in glimmering shades of gold that reminds him of a bonfire, whirling abstract shapes in beautiful warm hues. Another next to it is painted in luscious greens that he thinks might be leaves. There’s a charcoal drawing underneath them both, a tall building that could be an old abandoned factory. “Which one is your favorite?” he asks, because he is curious.

“My favorite?”

Adrian repeats it as though the question had surprised him. Hector watches his eyes dance from picture to picture, appraising them each in pensive silence. He turns his head towards the sectioned-off office space near the stairs. Hector follows his line of sight to the small, color filled frame hanging above the desk.

“That one, I suppose.”

Hector gets up to see. The painting is done in watercolors, a scene set in what seems to be an outdoor market stall. Shelves of flowers sprawl over the sturdy paper, bouquets of all kinds. Hector can recognize hydrangeas and snapdragons, potted stalks of lupin and bunches of azaleas. The colors are beautiful, both soft and vibrant against the accenting greenery. Hanging in view are a few intricate wire bird cages, wrought in white painted iron. Hector adjusts his glasses at the bridge of his nose as he admires it. It is breathtaking.

“Beautiful,” he breathes.

“Thank you.” Adrian’s chin hangs over the back of his chair as he watches Hector. There’s a nostalgic look on his face. “I spent a semester in Paris during art school, for my painting requirements. There was an elderly lady who sold her flowers at the _Marché aux fleurs_ who liked me. She would let me sit and paint her displays on market days.”

Hector smiles dreamily. “Paris.” He’s never been anywhere so interesting as Paris. Never even been abroad. He tries to imagine Adrian as a student, painting his assignments surrounded by flowers. It’s very easy.

“Those paintings were always my mother’s favorites.”

The air around them suddenly hangs heavy, almost a bit sad. Adrian’s voice trails off with a melancholy breath, and Hector is unsure of what to say. He chooses to simply stay quiet.

It is fairly common knowledge amongst all of his employees that Vlad Ţepeş had, at one point, been married. Hector knows his wife had died a year or two before he’d come to work for the man, though no one _ever_ talked about her, or the manner of her death. He suspects Isaac knows more about it, though he’d never felt brave enough to ask. Never thought to, even. It felt too much like prying anyway.

The somber edge to Adrian’s face alludes to there being so much more to this story, and Hector reminds himself that he is entitled to none of it. This, like Adrian’s apparently strained relationship with his father, Hector’s _boss,_ is quite clearly something he shouldn’t press any further.

“I forgot to ask,” Adrian says quietly, breaking the fragile silence, “would you like a drink? I’ve got wine, or seltzer. A friend of mine may have left some beer in the fridge if you’d rather have that.”

At the mention of a drink, Hector is suddenly reminded of just how arid the smoke has left his mouth and throat. His tongue feels dry between his teeth, sticky and uncomfortable against his gums. “Actually, I would really like some water.”

Adrian gets up to walk to the kitchen. “Suit yourself.”

Hector follows him. He’s not sure why. He watches as Adrian pulls a glass from an overhead cabinet, holds it under the tap as he fills it. Hector accepts it from him with a shy murmur of thanks and takes a long, thirsty drink.

His attention again settles on the veritable mountain of dishes sitting in Adrian’s sink. He’s done a fine enough job of ignoring it since he’d walked into the apartment, but here, now, standing awkwardly in the kitchen as Adrian watches him drink his water, it’s hard to look anywhere else.

Frankly, it’s starting to give him a headache.

“Would you like help washing your dishes?”

Adrian’s brow furrows at the question. He eyes Hector curiously, as though he’s not sure what to make of it. Hector is either too high or too consumed by it to feel embarrassed about it, though he hopes Adrian doesn’t mistake his sincerity for judgement. “What?”

“I don’t mind.” He taps a finger against the side of the glass. The sound rings delicately against the kitchen tile, even through the ambient music. “Really. In fact, I actually like tidying up.”

“Um.” Adrian blinks at the mess in his sink. He combs his fingers through what few pieces of blond hair hadn’t quite made it into the bun atop his head. Finally, he shrugs, letting go of a soft sigh. “Sure. Why not.”

Hector tries to suppress the silly grin that creeps up over his face.

And so they spend the next hour or so chipping away at the myriad plates, bowls, pots, pans, and frankly alarming number of wine glasses buried deep within the depths of Adrian’s sink. Hector helps him unload the dishwasher. He learns where most things go in Adrian’s kitchen as they put them away together before carefully refilling the now empty dishwasher. Anything left is either too large to fit or requires hand-washing, so they tackle that as well. Hector tasks himself with scrubbing and rinsing, while Adrian stands at his side with a towel to dry and put away.

By the end of it, they have an empty sink and Hector’s shoulders feel much lighter. When they’re finished, Adrian pulls an apple from his fruit bowl. He splits it with him, slicing it straight down the center. At the first bite, Hector thinks it might be the most satisfying thing he’s ever eaten, due in no part, he is sure, to the hits from the pipe he’d taken earlier.

“Thanks, I guess,” Adrian chuckles. He eyes Hector fondly from the other side of the kitchen. “I have to say, while that’s not exactly the strangest thing a guest has asked of me, it has to be up there.”

“Sorry.” Hector hides his mouth behind the remainder of his apple. “That was probably weird. I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

“Not rude, I think. Just a little odd.”

Hector finds he doesn’t really mind that. He’ll take odd over some of the things he’s been called in the past. Odd he can handle.

Eventually they find their way back to the sofa where, just like the night before, they end up talking about not much of anything, really. Adrian is nice to talk to. While Hector’s confidence in his ability to judge people has tanked in light of recent events, he finds Adrian to be a good listener. He seems genuinely invested in whatever Hector says, takes the time to truly _listen_ to him. Adrian is funny, intelligent, and interesting.

It’s almost a little too familiar, but unlike Lenore, even the way she’d been in the very beginning, Adrian never once asks anything of him.

It’s nearing three in the morning by the time Hector bothers to look at his phone. There are, to his relief, no messages. A few emails, but he decides to leave those for his return to work on Monday.

“Do you need a ride home?” Adrian asks him as he gets up to leave. He follows him to the door. “I can call one for you.”

“I’ll be fine. I walked. My place isn’t that far.”

“Well.” He gives Hector a small, casual smile. “Let me know if you ever need someone to smoke you out again. This was… fun.”

“I…” Hector’s brain stutters over that word. Fun. Adrian had spent time with him and thought it had been fun. He nods. “Okay. I will.”

He almost wishes he’d taken him up on that ride as he books it home, the cold nipping at his face and chasing him down the sidewalk as he goes. It makes the trip back to his apartment shorter than it had been on his way over. Hector shivers as he unlocks his door, chilled fingers fumbling with his key as he slides it into the lock. When he opens it, he nearly jumps out of his skin to find Isaac standing in their kitchen, shirtless and waiting in the dark.

“Jesus,” Hector gasps as he jumps. The door shuts behind him. He takes a moment to lean against it, his heart still racing between his ribs. He thinks he can see a smirk on Isaac’s face. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No. I was having trouble sleeping.” He turns on a light. Hector squints his tired eyes. “You were out late.”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He drags his hand over his face. “I lost track of time.”

“You don’t need my permission to come home at three in the morning, Hector.”

“Right. Sorry.” He flinches at the repetition. Just how many fucking times has he said that word today? “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

“Good night.”

In his room, Hector strips down to his tee shirt and briefs before falling directly into the comfort of his bed, barely remembering to pull off his glasses before his face meets his pillow. He pulls Cezar close, curling around the little dog as he snores away in the dark. Hector’s mind spins with the events of that night: the reclamation of his ID, the beautiful paintings on Adrian’s walls, the sweetness of the apple still bright on his tongue.

He buries his face in sheets that no longer reek of Lenore’s perfume and, for the first time in what feels like forever, falls asleep with a dazed smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please, please, please leave comment and let me know what you thought! I can't tell you guys how much comments mean to me, and I really do treasure each and every one :)

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](http://isaidyoulookshitty.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/despommess).


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